How To Haunt The Living
by Hack.Drawer
Summary: It's hard being a ghost - but it's harder living your afterlife out "in peace" when a huge, scary spider knows your name. Sanji and Zoro team up with ghost hunters to help a little boy find his way to the light. AU where (almost) everyone is already dead COMPLETE
1. Chapter 1

**A/n: I felt unsatisfied with the first version, but it's back! Cleaned up and hopefully a little less chaotic. Maybe one day you'll see a version of this story as published original works ;D**

 **Part One:**

 **Remember Your Name**

* * *

It wasn't the most glorious way to die – one day he thought he'd head to the store for things for dinner and the next he found himself watching the coroner cut open his body, the consequence of a hit-and-run.

Being a ghost was hard. For some reason, the bright white light that was supposed to beckon him didn't come. Time didn't seem to exist, floating past him without acknowledging him. He often caught himself sitting in his old living room with a stunned expression, watching the hands of the clock tick by without any regards to him. The living room changed around him, the occupants living there changing like a sudden sweep of a channel. It was startling to acknowledge the strangers that rendered and remodeled his old home into versions that pleased them, but they were like ghosts themselves.

One morning, he was walking his usual route to the college when someone hit him in the side as he was passing by. Stunned into a full stop, he turned to see how that had happened when he saw a man in clothes fitting for another generation pointing at him companionably.

"My dude!" the man said cheerfully before walking off, blending into the crowd.

"Wait… _wait_! You can see me?" he cried after him.

The man responded from him from within the crowd, his voice bodiless. " _And_ hear you!"

" _Are you a ghost, too_?"

"Absolutely!"

And with the man long gone, walking some invisible route of his own, the Lonely Ghost felt his heart race. Well, what _should have_ been his heart – his ghost of a heart. Because he had nothing better to do, he waited on the street corner to see the man again. By the time morning traffic began passing through, the ghost walked on. It had never occurred to him that he could interact with other ghosts; he couldn't tell them apart from the living. Now that he was aware that they were out there, it felt like his eyes and sense of understanding had begun to expand.

His old college campus was as busy as it always had been, and the ghost wandered along his usual route. He usually started from the parking lot and made his way to the cafeteria, where the coffee was great and the creamer was always cold. Remembering the taste of coffee made his mouth salivate in a way he hadn't felt in ages. With that wondrous reminder, the ghost was startled to see that he could acknowledge the scent of the cafeteria, the difference of food on display – it was as if a switch had occurred, and he was seeing the brand new cafeteria with brand new ghostly eyes.

The design had changed, and he examined the new differences with awe. The cafeteria had expanded in size and design since his days, and he found that where he usually sat was now a soda station. The tables were bigger, seats newer, spread in a half moon away from the kitchen.

The Lonely Ghost sat slowly at a table near the heavy glass doors, hands folded between his knees. Around him were the quiet voices of college students rousing themselves for the day, smell of lotions, hangovers and the five day stench of someone that hadn't yet taken a shower permeating the air. It took him awhile to process these new sights and scents, amazed at the differences from his generation to this one.

Time passed without him acknowledging it when he finally noticed a guy wearing a bloodied orange and brown flannel shirt with a grey hood taking a seat across from him. Half of this man's facial skin was missing, revealing a gruesome display of skull and muscle. He kept wiping his eyes, oozing blood from a hideously deep wound on his scalp. The Lonely Ghost jumped out of his chair with an awkward noise as the guy's own eyes widened with realization.

" _You can see me_?" they asked at the same time.

" _I can_!" they answered in unison.

"How did you…?"

"Hit by a car. You?"

"Hell if I know, I was on my motorcycle when I realized the scenery changed! I'm still trying to understand how this is possible!"

The Lonely Ghost slowly sat back down as motorcycle guy exhaled heavily, watching his blood pool onto the table in front of him. It began to drip onto the clean floor, pushing into a colorful spread away from them. The Lonely Ghost made a disgusted face at how fast this happened – both of them reacted with surprise when a man wearing a backpack slipped in the puddle, drawing people to look at him with concern.

"That happens a lot," Motorcycle Man said with a furrowed brow, watching as the man looked around himself for the cause of his slip.

"Maybe it wouldn't if you'd cleaned yourself up, moron," the Lonely Ghost commented as a kitchen worker ventured out with a mop. Both of the living looked puzzled when they could find nothing visible on the floor that caused the accident. The kitchen worker began to clean anyway, the man walking off with a puzzled expression. Motorcycle Man's blood continued to pool around him in a widening circle.

"This is the first time I spoke to someone since I saw that other guy," the Lonely Ghost said with wonder.

Motorcycle Man wore a shell shocked expression. His hands went to his hair – what was left of it.

"I have to go," he then said in a dazed tone, getting up from the table to walk off.

Because he was sure to lose him, the Lonely Ghost got up from his chair and hurried after him. He followed Motorcycle Man through what seemed like brand new hallways – new display cases, new stairways. It had been awhile since the Lonely Ghost had been on this side of the building, and he'd come to realize just how long he had been returning to campus. It had expanded and some areas remodeled to accommodate the influx of people attending. It was a brand new world for him, and he nearly lost sight of the other man as he made his way to a doorway and walked in. But as he followed, he saw that the classroom was empty.

Motorcycle Man sat near the back and stared with sightless eyes ahead of him. Slowly, the Lonely Ghost took a chair next to him and looked ahead as well. The quiet buzz of the room was the only sound there. Faint voices of the living were in the distance, reminding him that the world continue to turn without them.

"I had a test that I was cramming for," Motorcycle Man said. "That's why I was late."

"You can't take it," the Lonely Ghost reminded him. "You're dead."

"Yeah… _yeah_ , I get that. But I can't stop coming here."

"This place grew in size since I was alive."

Motorcycle Man looked at him, blinking one eye owlishly as he took in his clothes before looking at him. "You don't even look dead."

Eager to show off, the Lonely Ghost lifted his shirt – half of his left side was caved in, swollen and discolored. Motorcycle Man winced.

"One of my ribs went straight through my heart. But my brain didn't die until nearly thirty minutes later," the Lonely Ghost said. "I overheard the coroners tell my mom that after I woke up again."

"Took me awhile to realize that I wasn't even alive," Motorcycle Man said. "I don't even know _how_ I died."

"Pretty sure it was an accident," the Lonely Ghost commented with some skepticism.

They sat there in silence for quite some time before he realized that class was in session. All around them were students engrossed in the professor's words, and neither of them knew what subject he was talking about.

"Things have changed," he said vaguely. "It's like we're suddenly in the future."

Motorcycle Man gave him a startled look, then focused on what was being said. Once he realized that nothing made sense of modern day computer programs, he gave a wordless noise. "Holy shit…you're right!"

They left the classroom, wandering awkwardly through the hallway before emerging out into the main hall. There were students all around them – clustered around tables, chairs, corners with outlets where their smartphones were plugged in. Their voices were quiet but some were cheerful and happy while others were intensely engrossed in their laptops and cellphones. Motorcycle Man paused and looked over the shoulder of one, scrunching his brow with concentration.

He then straightened up with surprise. "This isn't even my country."

" _What_."

"Everything's in English!"

"Well, this is America, so…"

Motorcycle Man looked dazed, looking at his fingers as he counted them. They were purpled and broken and it made the Lonely Ghost squirm at the sight of them. Terror alit Motorcycle Man's features, and blood splashed about as they went to his head with utmost panic.

" _How the hell did I get here_?"

Without words, the Lonely Ghost shrugged.

Motorcycle Man slumped to the floor. Even if he were a ghost, people passed around him easily, a cluster of students moving from the stairway to their classes while classes emptied for another round. The main hall filled with sound.

"I'm a lost ghost!"

"Well…wait…if you're from another country, then why are you speaking my language?"

"What do you mean? You're speaking mine!"

"I don't even know your language!"

"Well, you're speaking it!"

"I've never spoken your language in my life!"

"Impossible because I've never even spoken English!"

"Then what the hell are you doing here?"

" _I don't know_!"

"Don't expect me to return you," he warned sternly, "because I've never been overseas."

Motorcycle Man heaved a breath as he sunk down onto the floor. Laying there for some time, he decided he couldn't help him and the encounter was way too weird. He had to go to the store – not to buy anything, but because that had been part of his routine. He carefully stepped over the Motorcycle Man to leave him to his misery.

The grocery store was bright and cheery, and the Lonely Ghost wandered the aisles, looking for items he'd intended on buying that fateful evening he'd died. Beef stew with French bread, he remembered, wandering the meat freezer.

It took some time to meander back to the college grounds, but it was always morning when he did. He made it in time to see the kitchen ladies setting out warmed pastries, the smell of coffee catching his attention. He sat at his new table and stared ahead of him at a man looking over a heavy textbook. He missed having conversations.

Knowing the living couldn't hear him, the Lonely Ghost said, "Hi."

The man seemed to sweat nervously. It then startled the Lonely Ghost when his head connected with a forceful slap. He hadn't felt pain like that in so long that he wasn't sure how to react. When he turned and looked over to see Motorcycle Man standing there with an angry expression, he rubbed his head fitfully.

"What the hell was that for, asshole?" he demanded. "You shitty piece of work!"

"I waited here for _two weeks_ for you to come back!" Motorcycle Man snarled back.

" _So_? I can't help you!"

"You're the _only_ one that can see me!"

"It's not _my_ fault!"

The man with the textbook slammed it shut and hurried off.

 _Two weeks?_ The Lonely Ghost thought with a startled look. It was true – time didn't apply to him, but it stunned him that such time could fly by without him even noticing. Where had been all this time? Did he follow his normal routine? Or was he wandering the grocery store, still thinking about his stew?

Motorcycle Man took the seat the living man had vacated. As they sat there in silence, the Lonely Ghost's attention went to a woman standing at a table with another, both of them looking at a piece of paper.

"What's your name? Let me get your number," one said, whipping out something from her purse.

The Lonely Ghost was stunned as he thought about his own. It had been some time since he'd heard it, since it fell from anyone's mouth. He blinked rapidly, looking up at the ceiling. Damn, what was his…? He then jerked up from the chair, reaching into his back pocket for his wallet. It was still there – with the same amount of bills, cards and knick-knacks he'd had when the car took his life.

He opened it, revealing his ID, brightening. "Ah. It's Sanji."

Motorcycle Man looked at him with confusion. "What is?"

"My name! Say, what's yours?"

Motorcycle Man released a puzzled frown. He looked lost for a few moments while Sanji admired his own ID. He produced it to the other ghost, showing off his bright grin and old address. "This is me. Sanji."

"Damn, that feathered hair is _awful_ ," Motorcycle Man commented with a wince. "Eighties. That explains your mom trousers and ugly shirt with shoulder pads. No one wears their sweater over their shoulders like that, dude. And those Reeboks? _Ew_."

Sanji gave him an outraged look. "What are you _talking_ about? I look fly!"

"Look, _this_ was in, okay?"

Sanji gave the oversized ripped flannel shirt and obscenely wide legged jeans a skeptical look. The inch thick threaded books were unlaced and much too brown. Green hair was parted harshly down the middle to accommodate slightly floppy bangs to frame a wide forehead. "What, were you an infant aspiring to wear grown up clothes? Because that's hideous."

"It was _comfortable_!"

"Probably wearing a helmet should've been, too."

Motorcycle Man grumbled, reaching up to wipe blood from his eyes. "I don't even know what I look like…"

"You didn't think to look in the mirror?"

"Of course not!"

"Look, I can't help you get back to your country," Sanji said, feeling somewhat better knowing his name again. "What's your name?"

"It's….!" Motorcycle Man looked dazed for a few moments, so Sanji reached out to him and patted his pockets until he felt the bulge he was looking for. He ripped out the man's wallet and opened it, coins scattering everywhere.

"Zoro," he announced, then grew puzzled. How the hell did he know that? The characters on the card were something written from some alien world, but he knew each and every line like it was his own language. He looked at the other man as he snatched his wallet back to see for himself.

"Ah, _that's_ what it is," he heard Zoro mumble to himself, crouching to pick up his money.

"What are you going to do, then?"

"I don't know! I've just been…driving. And going to class…and this isn't even my building," Zoro trailed off in a bewildered mumble.

"Then, let's go to class. Mine's off in this direction."

Once they seated themselves in a grand auditorium, it took Sanji some time to realize that his classroom had changed. It had been a studio style area when he was alive – with stovetop islands and stools, and now it looked like a theater had been rebuilt over its place. They watched the stage slowly come alive with various set items, students talking quietly amongst themselves.

"This isn't even my class," Sanji mumbled.

"With your outfit, you'd fit right in," Zoro mumbled back.

Sanji rolled his eyes. He looked at his watch, which had stopped a long time ago, the plating cracked. "I have to go to the store in a bit. Then I go home."

"I'm lost, so I'll just follow you."

Once they arrived there, Sanji wandered the aisles with mind for the ingredients to his beef stew while Zoro shuffled along behind him with an awed expression. They were standing in the meat department when they heard a hissing sound coming from behind them. Startled at the noise, both of them turned to see a boy peeking out from one of the aisles nearby. His deathly pale features, shadowed eyes, lack of hair and hospital nightgown definitely made him stand out from the living.

"Can you see me?" the boy asked cautiously, looking at them with eyes as wide as dinner plates.

Cheered, Sanji slapped Zoro's back. "Having your ugly mug gives us an advantage! Hey, yes, c'mere!"

" _Ugly_? What's wrong with it?" Zoro asked, reaching up to touch his ruined face with his broken fingers. Sanji gave him an impatient look while the boy drifted over to them, looking up at them with awe.

" _Hi guys_ ," he said merrily. "It's been awhile since I talked to anyone without an ass gown!"

"You come from the hospital nearby?" Sanji asked him curiously.

"Yeah…I finally found the right door," the boy said proudly. Then he wilted slightly. "But now it feels like I got lost but I'm not sure why..."

"This guy got lost," Sanji said, gesturing at Zoro. "He's not in even in the right country!"

"I can't find my way back to my room, so I feel ya, bud," the boy said with sympathy at Zoro. He then looked down at the garish trail of blood that followed them. "Why don't you follow _that_ back to where you came from?"

Zoro looked down, noticed it, then looked startled as he looked back behind them. He began following it, Sanji and the boy trailing after him.

"You're pretty smart," Sanji told him.

The boy beamed up at him. "My grandpa told me I could've been the smartest kid in the class! Were you guys at a costume party? You're wearing pretty ugly clothes…"

Sanji looked affronted, pulling at his pink sweater. "These are the clothes I died in, thank you very much."

"' _Died'_?" the boy asked, bewildered. "You're _dead_?"

"Yeah, we all are, I guess."

The boy faltered with a misstep then came to a stop. Sanji looked at him with question, losing sight of Zoro. The boy's stunned features made Sanji feel bad for saying anything. It looked like the kid had been slapped with both hands.

" _Oh_ ," he finally uttered, shoulders wilting. "I guess that explains some things…so…so I'm a ghost…I'm a ghost, now?"

"Er…" Sanji trailed off, biting the inside of his cheek. He bent slightly to look at him, hand on one bony shoulder. "If you can see us and talk to us, yes. I'm sorry."

"Oh… _oh_ …that…that sucks…I…I was a little happy because the doc said they could take me off the machine, and I thought…I thought that was good because…it kept making noise, and I was trying to watch the VMA's…Britney was on. _Oooh_ , Britney!" the boy lit up. "And she had a snake!"

Sanji had no idea what he was talking about, but he nodded and straightened up.

" _Britney Spears_?" Zoro asked, overhearing the conversation. He gestured at the floor. "It stops here."

"Then you can't find your way back," Sanji said, walking over to see this for himself. But he noticed he was in the aisle where he'd first stopped whenever he walked into the store. The spice aisle. Which made him wonder if he somehow just appeared there, or if this was just where his conscious started to pick up the knowledge of finding those ingredients.

"I was going to marry her," the boy told Zoro.

Zoro shook his head. "She married that Federline guy, the backup dancer."

"I knew they were seeing each other, but _noooooo_!"

"I don't know what the hell you guys are talking about, but Madonna and Cindy Crawford were my favorites," Sanji said cheerfully, both of them looking at him with startled expressions. "That mesh belly shirt was so clutch, and her hair was bangin'!"

Zoro and the boy snickered then laughed noisily while Sanji frowned.

"' _Madonna'_? That witchy woman was so weird!" the boy laughed.

"Wasn't that mole part of her plastic surgery?" Zoro asked.

"I get the feeling you guys are missing out. They were _way_ better than some chick with a snake!" Sanji said with a huff.

"Don't you talk bad about my future wife!" the boy cried indignantly.

Once they walked outside, their steps faltered once they emerged out into the parking lot. It seemed as if they were at a loss as to what to do next, and looked back at Sanji for direction. It was his first time seeing the expansion of the parking lot, the world changed since he'd last stepped out from the grocery store. It was shocking how much things had changed.

He realized the weight of their stares and frowned. "What?"

"So…what do we do now?" the boy asked.

"What's your name?"

At the blank look, Sanji looked down the busy street – with wider sidewalks, more traffic lights, faster traffic than what he was used to – and saw the cross that marked the hospital's location. It was nestled amongst some higher buildings, growing towers that had seemingly sprung overnight. He didn't remember ever being there, but when he was alive he'd sometimes he'd look in that direction.

Sanji then looked back at them. "C'mon, let's go find out. We've got nothing better to do."

"I don't want to go back there, I'm tired of that place," the boy said stubbornly. The light breeze whipped his hospital gown around, giving brief glimpses to his boxers underneath. His bony limbs were ghastly to see in the bright sunlight, his cheekbones sticking out with alarming sharpness. His teeth were yellowed and nubby, his lips cracked and blue. "I want to be outside."

"Why do we need to know his name?" Zoro asked Sanji with a puzzled look.

"Don't you feel better knowing yours again?" Sanji asked him pointedly. He then told the boy, "Fine. Stay here. Don't forget that we're coming back, either."

"Why, though?" the boy asked. "I'm fine without it."

"Something happens when you do. You kinda understand and remember who you were as...as a living being. It makes you feel better. Besides, you deserve a name. We all do."

The boy nodded with a skeptical frown, seating himself cross-legged on the sidewalk. People passed around him fluidly, Zoro catching sight of this with a puzzled expression as Sanji turned and started walking away.

"He might not even come from that hospital, there's usually several in a city," Zoro said.

"It's right _there_. Maybe it's part of his routine to walk around here. I don't think any of us can cross over entire oceans to wander away from the scene of their death," Sanji said, keeping an eye out for the man that first called out to him.

"'Routine'?" Zoro questioned, puzzled with the word.

"Don't you walk the same path over and over again?"

Zoro blinked, thinking about it. They joined others at a stoplight, naturally waiting for the light to turn in their favor. No one looked at them or acknowledged that they were there. Sanji kept an eye out for the man that had called out for him but also a steady eye on the hospital ahead.

 _A name, a name_ , he thought over and over with some determination. He felt he'd forget if he didn't keep telling himself this. It became important to remember. _A little boy's name from the hospital_.

"I don't know how the hell I even arrived here…" Zoro ended up muttering incredulously. "Maybe it'd help if I knew how I died."

"I think it's obvious _how_ , dumb ass."

"I meant, _details_ would be important! How, what, why, when! And when I get back there, should I take my revenge?" Zoro added, clenching a fist with a vengeful look to his eye. Sanji looked at him skeptically, thinking it was too late for that.

"I can't figure you out, man. You're a Rubik's cube," he commented lightly.

Zoro sighed noisily. "Yeah well, whatever, _prep_."

As they followed the group across the street, Zoro's blood leaving a garish trail behind him, Sanji had to admit he was glad to run into him. It felt different having someone to talk to. He felt a little more alive.


	2. Chapter 2

**Part Two:**

 **Accept Yourself**

* * *

The hospital was much bigger than what Sanji remembered – nestled between rising towers around it, surrounded by a sprawl of smaller buildings that had never been there when he was alive, it still held a large concrete cross atop of it, with the same angels embedded into the north and south sides of the building. It had expanded into two different buildings with a larger parking tower near it – the driveway was small and controlled by valet, with a narrow alley allowing way for emergency vehicles to enter. Across the street from it, he and Zoro gaped up at it with awestruck expressions. It seemed like a bright beacon of light against the shadowy surrounding of the buildings around them – the area unnaturally dark, as if night had suddenly crossed their paths. The air felt cold and stifling, and it was a weird feeling for both of them to understand.

A name, a name, Sanji thought with determination. "The little boy's name…"

Zoro glanced at him from the side of his eye. "Why do you keep saying that?"

"If I don't, I feel like I'll forget," Sanji said.

It occurred to Zoro that this was so – he felt like forgetting was easy to do. "A boy's name," he repeated softly. They then looked at each other, inhaling and exhaling at the same time.

"You smell?" Sanji asked low, unsure why his voice had to be quieted.

Zoro lifted an arm to sniff himself. "I smell good."

Sanji rolled his eyes. "I _meant_ , idiot, do you smell that?"

Zoro lifted his chin to inhale again, wincing. Sanji realized he might not be able to smell anything at all – his nose was missing. But Zoro said, "Yeah…it's like…rot. Like…trash left out in the sun. Fish guts left on the beach."

"Yeah...I guess."

After their initial observation, the pair grew aware that there was more to the building than just the structures – their gazes fell towards the moving mob of people milling in directionless action around the entire building, like a dark cloud of fish in a fluttering course without interruption. The voices that emerged from the horde were loud; wails consistent with mad laughter and shouts that could have been extra city noise – but there was a sense of understanding that not all of these people were the living. The living passed through them without interruption but wore uneasy expressions.

Zoro placed a hand on his gut with a troubled expression, Sanji holding his lips tight as he observed the mob with uncertainty on his features. It felt as if they were looking at a moving wall without a gate in sight. Some of these ghosts walked over each other; some tripped and were trampled harmlessly – Sanji caught sight of a woman pushing against another's wheelchair with her broken body, her own momentum giving the wheels action to move.

Sanji looked for a crosswalk – a habit – while Zoro started forward with his hands in his pockets, eyes locked on a woman that was sobbing noisily up against a fire hydrant. Seeing traffic pass through the Motorcycle Man, Sanji hurried after him with a sheepish expression.

"I forget we don't need to follow laws of physics anymore," he said awkwardly.

"It's because you're wearing pink. Any dork willingly wearing _that_ stuff tends to be less advanced than others," Zoro replied haughtily, looking over the other ghost's clothing. Sanji snarled at him.

"Back in my day, I was a stud!"

"For what, My Little Pony?"

As they approached the crying woman, they were horrified to realize the item she cradled against herself was stained blankets, the shape within clutched hard with equally stained arms. She caught sight of them, her swollen eyes revealing blackened orbs and burst blood vessels around her cheeks.

"Help us," she whispered thickly, clutching the bundle tightly. "Help us! It won't come out! _It won't come out_!"

"S-sorry," Zoro said hastily, deciding to avoid her while Sanji looked on with horror. "Can't speak the same language as you."

They walked past her hastily, nearing the moving mob with apprehension – some were holding shaking hands and blood stained cloth against holes in their bodies; some stared blankly ahead of them, teetering over some edge with uncontrollable shakes and hacking coughs. Their clothing varied from era to era.

Both of them awkwardly began to enter into the mob, shuffling past those wailing noisily with pain, skirting away from those that were dropping innards and fluids from opened orifices. Zoro pushed through ghostly bodies, some of them startled by their appearance. Sanji found himself losing sight of Zoro, so he reached out and grabbed hold of his flannel.

"Don't you dare leave me behind! You might end up in Canada!" Sanji snapped after him.

"Hold on tight, eighties dance queen," Zoro advised, muscling his way through some burn victims, "because only I can get us through this."

"Why only you?"

"Because I'm younger, and more advanced than you are."

Sanji rolled his eyes mightily, balling his fingers into Zoro's flannel despite himself. "I'm only letting you do all the dirty work for me, moron."

Those the pair interrupted mid-walk were shoved by those behind them. Their startled faces registered the area, the world they were working in. Expressions shifted with alarm, awareness dawning like drawing veils. Shouts began to build as ghosts reacted, unrest causing panicked reaction.

Those reaching out to respond physically to Zoro's rude pushing were shoved from those from behind, interrupting their gesture. Sanji felt fingers scraping against his pink sweater, and he reacted with an alarmed shout as it was eventually pulled from his shoulders. He smacked into Zoro, who was stumbling his way through the thickening center of the mob, climbing over persons in wheelchairs. All of their ghostly shouts of discovery, pain and anger filled the air with a different charge.

"Can't you be a little more polite?" Sanji snapped at him, flapping his flannel.

"I'm not from this country," Zoro tossed over his shoulder, wearing a devilish grin. "I don't know any better."

"Civility is _universal_ , jack ass!"

"I'm sorry, can't understand you! And who says we belong in this universe?" Zoro added, shoving aside an elderly man and knocking aside a policeman, "We might belong to another one!"

The weight of those words affected Sanji. He ended up squeezing his eyes shut, repeating to himself, "Find the boy's name! Find the boy's name!"

As the mob's populace thickened the closer they drew to the hospital, Zoro began shoving those in front of him away to clear a path for them. Sanji half climbed onto his back as people started to move after them with reactive intent. Zoro stumbled under his weight, grabbing hold of a large man in lumberjack clothing and yanking himself back to his feet. The lumberjack looked at Zoro with surprise, half of his mouth missing as his chainsaw ruined arms lifted to push him back. Sanji was hit by bloodied nubs, causing him to shout as Zoro hastily continued forward.

They managed to stumble out from the mob, evading contact with wanderers that had yet to join up with the horde. Looking back once they had space to do so, the pair saw that their interruption had ghosts reacting to their unknown surroundings with horror and pain. But just as fast as it had happened, the mass continued moving in their never-ending flow, swallowing up the interruption without much of a change.

Once Zoro realized Sanji was clinging to him, he reached back and shoved him off his back with irritation. Sanji caught himself then scowled at the horde, his pink sweater gone forever. Zoro used a finger to poke at his shoulder pads, look of disgust crossing over his remaining features. Sanji kicked him in the shin with his Reeboks then looked up at the hospital.

There were people milling around the driveway and entrance, constantly interrupted by the living's valet services. Cars flowed through ghosts without interruption, the living marching resolutely on the sidewalk. Through the landscape was kept beautifully, the sense of darkness in the street seemed to keep everything in shadow around the building. It seemed as if it were permanently twilight here – in the middle of a day change that wouldn't let up.

The entrance to the hospital whispered with each movement of the door, and both of them looked at it with resolve. Zoro looked at Sanji, frowning.

"Just a name, right?" he asked.

"Yeah, that's pretty much it," Sanji said. "If he has a name, it'll make him feel better."

"But he's dead, so…"

"Knowing your name makes you feel better, right?"

"Yeah, but…if it looks like this out here, imagine what it could look like inside," Zoro said, looking up at the concrete overhang of the hospital. He read the name out loud. "'Heart of Peace City Hospital'. Wow. It was like someone couldn't decide on a name, and just threw them all together."

Sanji's mouth fell open, staring at the name emblazoned with stark lettering, unable to even remember the name of his city. He pulled out his wallet to look when Zoro started forward, so he abandoned that intention and followed after him.

They walked in through the lobby doors and were treated to a heavy silence and fog just inside the foyer. The silence was immense, thick and heavy; as if the concept was nothing but a permanent vacuum of emptiness. The living passed by them like gray blurs, their voices muffled. Shadows built and formed over doorways, stairs and elevators – but the lack of sound made the pair distinctively uncomfortable. Signs that should have led them in the right direction were missing – every wall was just a block of darkness without any indication of formation. There was only one doorway visible, pinpointed by a very thin shimmer of red light.

Zoro turned to look out the doors and realized that the fog had covered them. Directionless, he spun in a small circle, feeling panic start to rise up within him. Sanji twisted to look over his shoulder, frowned, and then headed for the red light. He reached back and grabbed Zoro's flannel as the man made to walk in the other direction.

" _This_ way," he said, his voice surprisingly loud, echoing around them. Both of them looked around themselves with a start, positive that this wasn't a good thing. Neither of them could imagine why.

Sanji continued towards the red shimmer of light, focused on reaching it. Something seemed to shift in the distance, causing them both to pause. Neither of them were sure of what sort of sound it was. Hastily, Sanji continued towards the red light.

It turned out to be the control panel for the elevators. He pushed the Up indicator, the elevator doors sliding open with a wisp. The living stood there as grey blurs, outlined as shadowy bulks. It was only their tired, far-off voices that gave the pair the confidence to board with them. One of them leaned forward with an exasperated mutter to close the doors.

"It's always doing that," Zoro heard the man complain. "People need to make up their minds on where they want to go."

When the doors opened to reveal a bright hallway ringing with the comforting noise of a busy hospital corridor, Sanji decided to start here. Zoro followed after them, both of them standing near what looked like a nurses' station. It was vivid, here; the sounds around them, the light – almost exactly as what it was before they'd passed.

Paramedics passed through them with their occupied stretcher. The nurses were working at their computers with a doctor leaning over the counter with a disinterested look, listening to their conversation. Sanji looked around himself for the map of the hospital, sure he'd find something that would take him to the right floor.

"Let's find the right floor from here," he decided.

"What is up with the first floor?" Zoro asked him incredulously. "Did we just ascend from Hell?"

"You believe in that?"

The doctor looked over at them, then strode over with his hands sliding into his pockets. "Look at you. You're dripping your damn foreigner DNA everywhere."

Zoro froze, looking at him with bewilderment then looking around himself as Sanji turned at the sound of the doctor's words. The man was making direct eye contact with both of them, wearing what could only be described as a repulsed expression.

"Yes, I'm talking to you," the doctor told Zoro, eyes running over his injuries. " _Gross_."

"You – you… _see_ me?" Zoro asked tentatively, Sanji looking at the doctor dumbly.

"I'm looking right at you, sir. What are you doing here? You're dead, you don't need our services here," the doctor said curtly.

Sputtering at a lack of an explanation, Zoro didn't know what to say. Sanji said quickly, "We found a boy. He said he came from here – we're just trying to find his name."

"Good luck with that, Sparkles," the doctor told him, returning his attention to Zoro then down at the puddle left behind. He shook his dark head while Sanji sputtered at the name he was given. "People will be tripping all over that."

As if on command, a nurse with a clipboard slipped between Zoro's legs and crashed to the floor, much to the delight of those standing at the station. Amidst the calls and sputters from the nurse, Zoro self-consciously stepped away from her, patting uselessly at his head.

"So, you came _into_ the hospital to find out a kid's _name_ , and being dead yourselves, what does it even matter?" the doctor asked them.

His features were drawn tight, tired, and there was no indication of how he'd died – his white overcoat hung loosely around a what looked like another jacket, a light yellow shirt and black trousers. His shoes were worn and scuffed, but his stethoscope was shiny. The nametag on his chest read 'Donquixote', tapping ever so slightly against pens and a worn notebook. "Guess you have all eternity to do that, but people normally don't force their way into the hospital."

"He looked like he died of some kinda illness," Sanji said, watching as a cleaning lady appeared, looking in their area with a puzzled expression. She took out the appropriate signs and mop, trying to catch the reflection of the liquid that caused the nurse to slip. With a befuddled shake of her head, she started to mop over the shiny floor anyway. "No hair, hospital gown – "

"Did you look at his ID band?" the doctor asked with irritation.

"He didn't have one," Sanji said, recalling the boy's appearance. "He said he finally found the door out and he didn't want to come back. But I thought once he had his name, he'd feel better."

"If he's one of us, he's _dead_ , there's no point in 'feeling better'," the doctor said crankily. "He's feeling better _because_ he's dead."

Impatiently, Sanji said, "Look, just – where do they keep people like him? He mentioned being taken off a machine, we just need to know what floor, and then we can find our way around if so."

The doctor suddenly turned his head and began walking away from them, but he also started speaking, which prompted Zoro and Sanji to follow after him to hear.

"Well, names are unimportant when you're gone, but he will need to come back if he wants to move on. I don't know how he slipped on by without any of us noticing, but if he died here, then he has a way out. He can move on, he doesn't have to wander like the rest of you mongrels down there in the street."

"Excuse us for dying in the streets like 'mongrels'!" Sanji snapped at him. "We didn't choose our deaths!"

"The weak usually don't," the doctor returned with an eye roll. He gave Sanji a look that reflected his revulsion. "Especially in _pink_."

He looked at Zoro with the same expression. "Or _flannel_."

The pair looked at each other with irritation as the doctor continued on.

"As you can see, it's pretty busy here," the doctor said, walking up to a room shut by a curtain. He walked through it, barging in on an older man clutching his chest painfully while his wife fretted over him. Looking him over, the doctor glanced at his vitals on the machine nearby, then looked at Sanji and Zoro. He pinched the oxygen pipes shut with one hand, the other moving over the man's nose. "People can slip by but once they're out those doors, they can't return. Therefore, they can't move on. They think that if they can escape the door they can continue living. But ghosts _forget_ – they fall into a routine without any free thinking – they go for multiple lifetimes without remembering their name."

Sanji and Zoro watched as the man gulped for air, as the machine began to sound. Nurses hurried in as the woman started to sob, the man reaching out to claw at the air, trying his best to breathe. But the doctor continued holding his nose closed, the oxygen piping examined, hurriedly replaced by a nurse. When that was ripped out of his grip, the doctor closed the man's mouth with his hand. Horrified at what was happening before them, Sanji and Zoro were wordless as the dead doctor then grabbed firm hold of the man's shoulders and yanked as the team pushed the bed out, rushing to the surgical unit.

The man left behind blinked owlishly as the dead doctor suddenly reached out, jerking open a door to his left. Without much of an explanation or caring gesture, he kicked the surprised man into the doorway and slammed it shut. The emptiness left behind was thick and heavy, the wife's heavy sobbing filling the hallway moments later.

"He's much too old to waste time and resources here," the doctor then said with disgust, walking out from the room. Sanji and Zoro looked each other with matching expressions of horror, unsure of what happened. Hearing the man speak again, they forced themselves to move after him, watching as he looked over a man confined to a bed, under the influence of something that caused his limbs to jerk violently, his face crazed as his eyes darted about.

"And _this_ stuff," the doctor said with that expression on his face, "anyone willing to inject themselves with a substance that kills shouldn't even have a chance. These ones are the _worst_. They don't remember how, what, why, and when they died, and forget that they were human in the first place. So they become ghouls. Anyone that met a violent and untimely end with hate to burn turns into a ghoul. Don't forget."

" _'Ghoul'_?" Sanji repeated vaguely while Zoro formed the word with his own mouth, wearing a frown.

"They're all over the place!" The doctor reached into the man's chest, and while the pair of men watched his hand disappear, the man began to cry out hoarsely. His struggles grew weak as his eyes widened, his face purpled. He started to shriek as the doctor then reached out with a booted foot and caught what looked like a worn, metal handle. Sanji was mystified as to where these doorways appeared from – there was no indication that they were even there in the first place. He watched as the latch caught onto the doctor's foot, and he kicked it open. This led down into a dark, somewhat ominous stairway that disappeared into nothing.

Unable to say a thing, they watched as the doctor yanked the man from the bed as his body began to spasm, machines ringing out noisily. In that moment, the man's body shifted from the living to something dark and spindly, releasing a ghostly howl that made them cringe. Its face turned into a blackened orb of leaking gas, mouth opened to reveal broken, discolored numbs of points that dripped with multi-colored oils. The doctor grunted as he managed to shove the creature into the doorway and slammed the door shut. As the room filled with nurses that didn't show the same eagerness as the earlier patient, the floor rung with heavy pounding.

The doctor caught his breath then left the room.

"They feed off saps like you," the doctor said, examining the clipboard of a sleeping woman, her hands over her lower belly while an exhausted man sat at her side with his smartphone in his lap. "They don't have any recognition as a human, so they attack the dead in a vain effort to gain the form they once had. You'll want to avoid them as best as you can – once they eat you, you either turn into one of them or you'll just cease to exist. Sounds pleasant, right? Ceasing to exist? But you won't have a chance to come back – you'll repeat _their_ life. Seen it too many times in the living that come through here. I remember their faces."

"We've…never seen these guys outside," Sanji stuttered, looking at the woman with worry, watching as the doctor reached into her lower belly – when he removed his hand, there was a small form encased within. The doctor examined it with a frown. The formation was vaguely humanoid but it squeaked a very human sound while the woman reacted with a harsh cry, her fingers tightening over her abdomen. The doctor went ignored as nurses rushed in, calling for assistance. He then pushed his hand down back into the woman and gently redeposited the form. He reached out and patted her head with bloodstained hands and walked on.

"Of course not, because they gravitate back towards areas they once knew, where there's more to feed on. So if you weren't these types of guys when you died, then don't worry about it," the doctor continued on as equipment was rushed to the room they just vacated. Zoro looked behind himself apprehensively while Sanji was deathly pale, hand on his sunken stomach. "I've done my rounds here, we'll go up to the third floor. Either keep up and walk on your own."

"Er, Dr Donquxiote – "

"That's not my name," the doctor snapped at Sanji as he opened a door, revealing a very worn set of stairs – they were falling apart, concrete faded, the sound of some faraway wind touching them.

"That's what your tag says!" Sanji snapped back, hastily following after the doctor's longer stride as Zoro followed after him.

"I know what it says but it's not my name. I won't answer to it."

 _You_ child _, you just did_ , Sanji thought shrewdly. His eyes dropped to the doctor's shoes as a force of his own habit, then noticed an important detail.

Sanji reached out and shoved aside his coat, much to the doctor's surprise. His pants were with a high waist with a yellow shirt tucked into them. Much like how men wore their clothes in old Westerns. Sanji then tapped the man's chest, jabbing at his shirt pocket with a snappish action.

"This is _your_ name, isn't it?" he asked.

The doctor pulled his jacket lapel aside to reveal a stitched name on the pocket of his buttoned shirt. The action displayed a set of black suspenders that looked worn and weathered.

"There. It says 'Law'. Does that ring any bells?" Sanji asked, hands on his hips with a satisfied action.

Law wore a puzzled expression, his brow furrowing ever so slightly as he forced the material up so he could look it over for himself. He wore such a mystified expression that Zoro guessed this was how he looked when Sanji found his name, too.

"I'd…forgotten that. I haven't heard my name in…in a long time," Law said vaguely, fingertips smoothing over the tag.

Sanji tapped on his forehead, causing Law to scowl. "Law, _see_? Names are important, right?"

"I guess they are," Zoro commented, seeing how Law's expression changed as he fiddled with the tag stitched to his shirt. "Changed that attitude right quick."

"I'm _always_ right," Sanji told Zoro smugly. He gave an arm pump. " _Cheeuh_!"

Zoro laughed noisily. " _Hah_! What a dork! No one says that!"

"But…it doesn't match this one," Law said faintly, touching the 'Donquxiote' tag on his white jacket. He shook his head, as if to clear his thoughts. "Anyway, it doesn't matter."

"I'm sure once you have your full name, your _real_ name, you'd remember everything!" Sanji said with confidence as Law then opened a heavy wooden door and pushed it out, walking into a children's play room. There were kids playing there, but only one of them looked up to watch them pass by.

Law passed through a wall and headed to the right, emerging into the first room they came to. A teenager sat there, sipping apple juice from a canister while his mother fiddled with her cellphone. A younger child sat on the couch nearby, engrossed in his tablet. The teenager on the bed looked sleepy as Law walked to his bedside.

"What are you doing?" Zoro finally asked, finding his voice. "You just go from room to room – what, taking lives?"

"This is a small hospital, there isn't much room for occupation, so I clean them out," Law told him, reaching out to touch the teen's chest. He withdrew a pulpy mass that caused the teen to slump back into his pillow, struggling for breath. Sanji fretted as the mother didn't react, too engrossed with her phone to notice that her child was under distress.

" _Small_?" Zoro repeated. "Sanji said this place grew since he was here!"

"Back in the eighties," Sanji said, watching as the teen struggled to breathe. Law seemed to pinch and pull the mass apart until he replaced it back into the teen's chest, the boy sucking in a harsh breath. The mother finally lifted her head and reacted with a start.

"Remind me to come back here," Law told the pair as he crossed through the wall and into another where two other patients were sitting. "The 'eighties'?"

Sanji gave him a bewildered look. "That's when…I…well, I was alive at that time."

Law gave him an impatient look, reaching out to poke on Sanji's padded shoulders. His nose wrinkled with disgust. "I only asked what _century_ , moron. I didn't ask for some shitty backstory – anybody that died wearing what you've got on shouldn't be _allowed_ a backstory."

Aghast that someone would speak to him in this manner, Sanji gaped up at him. Zoro looked at the blond with delight as Law approached the elderly woman lying on the bed. He looked her over with suspicion as Sanji glared at Zoro.

"We're here for a name," Zoro reminded them sternly as Law reached into the woman's chest to clench down heavily. Her body jolted then relaxed onto her bed, the machines sounding off. The doctor then reached out and opened a door, yanking harshly on her arm. Her ghost uttered a surprised noise upon seeing him, then turned to look over her abandoned body. Before she could say anything, Law pushed her confused spirit in and slammed the door shut.

"I hate when they try to act surprised," Law muttered bitterly, wiping his hands together. "Like they didn't know what would happen after how they treated themselves."

"A name, _right_ ," Sanji muttered, blinking frantically. "For the boy. We found a boy. We're trying to find his name."

"You can make your way to medical records on level four," Law told them. "Good luck with that."

"There are two towers, so is it on this one or the next?" Sanji then asked, watching Law as he looked over the young male patient across from the elderly woman, who was lowering his magazine with a puzzled look towards his companion.

"I know nothing about that," Law said with irritation, using his hand to pry the other patient's head upon from the top, the man stilling with a sudden jerk upward. He began to seize, his body jolting as Law examined his very visible brain while Sanji and Zoro stood nearby, horrified.

"Not this one! _Not this one_!" a man cried out, running into the room with an armful of paper held against his chest. Law pulled away from the younger patient to look at him, Sanji and Zoro surprised by the interaction. This new ghost wore outdated clothing – a bowtie in place over a stiffly starched shirt and sharply creased blue pants. "He's got a procedure coming up - !"

"The tumor is growing, why is it taking so long to treat him?" Law asked impatiently. This one wore a penguin shaped hat, shuffling through his papers with a rush before finding the right one to thrust at him. Law examined it, then gave it back. "No insurance."

"Modern times, sir," the other man said wheezily.

"Two days max before I perform my own operation."

"Right!"

After the man's leave, Law crossed through the wall and emerged into the next room, Sanji following after a concerned look at the younger man on the bed. Zoro hastily followed before he could lose sight of either one.

"The _name_ ," Sanji repeated stiffly, watching as Law bent over a toddler sleeping in her bed. A sniffling woman laid next to her, combing through her brown curls with trembling fingers. "We just need to find the name."

"Bring him back here," Law told him, observing the pair on the bed. "He needs to move on. If you're cognizant with this task, then you may do that. It seemed easy for you guys to come in, it may be easier just doing that."

"But he doesn't want to come _back_ ," Sanji repeated with irritation. "He mentioned how hard it was to get out in the first place."

"Just bring him back," Law snapped at him, reaching down to pick the girl up. The separation was easy, and he opened the door to his right with both Sanji and Zoro looking on with horror as the mother reacted with a panic to her daughter's sudden stillness. The girl in the doctor's arms looked sleepily at them as he then gently handed her off to a pair of ghostly arms that reached for her. After shutting it he continued on, the mother howling for help. Unable to move, the pair of ghosts watched as the room filled with activity.

"If someone doesn't want to be helped, you can't help them!" they heard Law state from the other room.

Forcing themselves to move, the pair shuffled through the wall to find the doctor looking down at a woman with disgust as she patiently fed her husband some broth. He reached inside of her, withdrawing a pulpy mass from her chest. His fingers tightened as the woman hunched over suddenly, dropping the broth over her husband's lap. He looked at her with surprise, sputtering soup from his mouth as she struggled to breathe. Horrified, Sanji watched as Law crushed the mass in his hands and tossed it away, walking out the door.

The sounds of activity followed after them as Law walked down the hall, withdrawing his notebook and a pen.

"What the hell was that? She wasn't a patient!" Sanji growled after him.

"She was deliberately poisoning her husband," Law told him. "Not only can I tell when a patient is at death's door, I can read the souls of others around them. Only here can I render aid."

"' _Aid?_!" Sanji exclaimed skeptically. "You're tossing people through doors without giving them any chance to know where they're going!"

"You're irritating and I can't concentrate," Law said, scratching a line in his notebook and putting that away. "It's not my job to explain what I do. It's mine to clear room for more."

"So, you're like…an angel?" Zoro asked while Sanji sputtered angrily.

" _No_ ," Law snorted. He looked up then perked. "Oh. This is interesting. Look behind us."

Both of them turned, and were startled to see stiff mannequins standing in the hallway. Genderless, they had darkened shadows where their eyes should have been and gaping black holes for their mouths. Sanji and Zoro were so startled at their appearance that they drew together automatically as a sense of fear started to build up from within them. Law frowned at the rigid forms as a spine-tingling howl suddenly rang out from down in the emergency room below. The mannequins suddenly faced that direction.

"Those are monitors," Law said with a light gesture. "If a ghost does something out of line, they appear. I'm taking my rounds elsewhere while they deal with this damned ghoul."

"Monitors? What do they do?" Sanji asked timidly as the inhuman sounds grew with force.

"They look like demons," Zoro muttered uncomfortably. "They make me uncomfortable. And that sound…is that a ghoul?"

"These are not like ghouls. They haven't caught up to me, so I don't know what they do but I don't want to be caught," Law answered, opening another door and revealing the same set of stairs they'd used earlier. "They can follow me all they want."

Because of the sightless way the monitors watched them, Sanji and Zoro hurriedly scurried after the doctor, ghostly hearts pounding with trepidation.

Emerging onto the fourth floor, Law sighed something that sounded like relief. All around him were the sounds of women in distress. Cries of newborns rang out. The atmosphere seemed so much cleaner here, the air surprisingly alive with fresh and pure oxygen. Sanji inhaled deeply. He felt lighter, as if a heavy weight was removed from his form. With the way Zoro breathed in, it was the same for him.

"You'll never find the name of your kid," Law told them, more relaxed as his gait slowed. But as he walked, monitors popped out from the natural shadows of the hall, silently watching him as they passed. Sanji and Zoro pressed closer together as the sound of crackling glass began to build up as they approached two of the creatures pulling away from the shadows of a food cart. "It's too big of a place. You should just ask the living to help you."

"They can't see us," Sanji told him impatiently, keeping his distance from the doctor in case those monitors suddenly reacted. Law watched them cautiously but passed between them without trouble – their heads followed his movement, watching silently. " _No one_ can see us."

"Not everyone can," Law said, suddenly changing direction. "But there are some that do. They come through here, sometimes."

"Then… _what_? We just…find a living person and ask them for help?"

"Let them find you."

Sputtering with impatience, Sanji snapped, "If no one has seen us so far, then how is that even possible?"

"This is the longest conversation I had with another ghost," Law suddenly said, looking back at them with a curious expression. "Ones that have an active cognizance of their surroundings and limitations."

"You don't give anyone a chance!"

The sound of a nurse hitting the floor with a curse as she slipped caught their attention. Law looked at Zoro with irritation, reaching out and sliding a finger over the gaping wound that dripped continuously over his face. The wound hadn't been healed, but it stopped leaking. Zoro looked relieved.

Law flicked his hand out, muttering, " _Gross_."

"And you want to spend your afterlife helping other ghosts remember who they are? _Why_?" Law then asked Sanji with a bewildered expression.

"Just one," Sanji mumbled. "Remembering my name made me feel…not _alive_ , I guess, but remembering who I was made me feel like I had some purpose. This guy, too."

"What about your routine?"

"I follow it, but…"

"What did this ghost mean to you?"

"Nothing. I guess…I don't know him, we're not…related…I just…once I had my name, I realized it was important for others to know theirs, too," Sanji said with some hesitation. "I just think once he has his name, he'll want to complete his task. And don't ask me about some white light! I never saw it!"

"Because you didn't even look. It's always there for those on the outside," Law told him impatiently.

"You died here, right? Why didn't you go?" Zoro asked.

Law shrugged a shoulder, wearing a slightly puzzled expression.

"Then it must've been sudden because it took you awhile to realize you were dead," Zoro said.

"No," Law denied, looking down at his stitched nametag, moving his lapels to do so. With a thoughtful expression, he said, "I died here, _yes_ , but…for some reason, I don't remember how. Details are gone."

"Without your name, you can't think beyond your routine! You think this is it, you're set, why deviate from it?" Sanji insisted. " I don't know how you died, you said that's not your name on your tag – don't you think about leaving here? Who appointed you ghost killer? How do you know all this stuff you're telling us? Did someone talk to you, too?"

"I'm not killing anybody, I'm moving them out of the way so there could be more to take their spot." After a pause, Law then said, "I don't know who taught me this, I just know it."

"Then where do _those_ doors lead?"

"Every soul I take has an arrow on their forehead. One pointing up, one pointing down. _Those_ doors open to those places."

"So…there's a heaven and a hell after all?" Zoro asked with a bewildered expression.

" _I don't know_ ," Law said impatiently. "I just open them and toss. I haven't met a god, or an angel or demon – just mutations of a soul. I don't stand around questioning my existence or mourn my death – _however_ I died! I just follow my routine and clean out my route and repeat. I've never had to question it!"

"Because you don't have your name," Sanji insisted. "Once I found mine – "

He trailed off as Law left him, striding into the room they'd been paused outside of. He walked straight to the woman on the bed, reached inside of her, and held the still baby in his arms. He looked the child over, Sanji falling silent from his argument as he watched from the doorway. Zoro waited outside the room, the woman on the bed breathing heavily as her family paced with excited faces and words. The living continued on around them without pause – walking around Law as he examined the baby in his arms. The child shifted to look at him, his tiny mouth forming a smile.

For a brief moment, Law smiled back before he opened the door and handed the child to a set of waiting arms. He closed it and stilled for a few moments as the equipment started to ring out.

The room filled with activity as panic began to rise, and Law looked troubled. He gave a vague nod and let go of the handle, the door disappearing as soon as he did. Leaving the room, he paused again, seemingly unsettled.

"It's important," Sanji insisted quietly. "Our names. You see it now, right? Why are you doing this? You're supposed to move on, but why are _you_ the one making everyone leave? You say you never ran into an angel or demon or met God, but why are _you_ the one doing this? You haven't talked to other ghosts asides from those ones, so do you even know what era you're from?"

Law struggled to think. He looked down at his name tag, then seemed to step aside as family was ushered out from the room. Happy faces turned to dread, and the woman started screaming out painfully before a door was shut. Tapping his name tag, Law looked down the hall at the monitors that were still watching them, closer than before.

Sanji indicated the notepad in Law's pocket. "What's that? Records? Have you really looked at that thing?"

Law fumbled with it as he withdrew it, opening it. On his tiptoes, Sanji could see that the pages were blank, and Law looked startled as he flipped page after page to see this. The monitors shifted, the sound of broken glass growing nearer. Seeing that the forms had moved since they'd looked away from them, the trio hurried on.

Once they were at a safe distance, Law found nothing in the notepad to give him any indication he had even been using it. Sanji snatched it away from him, Zoro looking over his shoulder as pages fluttered by with blank pages. But on the very back was a faint imprint of scratches – something had been written on the page before it – the missing page had left remains in the binding. It was too faint for either of them to make out what it had been.

Law snatched it back, shoved it back into his pocket. "None of this matters. I need to continue."

"We'll find your name, too!" Sanji decided, hands on his hips. Zoro frowned at him for the extra task. "Now - how do we get the attention of the living?"


	3. Chapter 3

**Part Three:**

 **Greet Fellow Ghosts Amicably**

* * *

"I learned a few things while working here," Law said, standing at the nurse's station of the Maternity ward. There was only one nurse visible, her head bent over some files in front of her. He reached over and pushed a filing sorter over the desk, the nurse reacting with a shout as papers and the metal sorter tumbled to the floor. As the nurse crouched down to clean up, Law reached down and snatched her pen from the desk to tuck it into his pocket. When she set the pile atop of the desk, her head whipped around, patting her pockets, looking on the floor, then shuffling through the papers on the desk to search for her lost pen.

"That's why I lost so many of my pencils," Zoro commented, stunned.

"You have to remember the _feeling_ of doing those actions," Law said flatly. Sanji settled himself by a stack of pamphlets on the desk, the nurse opening a drawer to retrieve another pen before sitting down on her chair.

"This is why it's important to remember our names," Sanji said, reaching out to the pamphlets. Zoro watched him make a frustrated frown as his hand passed right through. He reached out to do it again, his face strained.

" _Hah_ ," Zoro taunted, crossing his arms over his chest. "Weak sauce."

Sanji snarled at him.

"It's pointless overthinking it," Law told him as Sanji missed the stack once more. "Set back, remember the action, _then_ do it."

"Who taught you to remember this if you don't even remember your name?" Zoro asked Law curiously as Sanji reset himself with a hard exhale before trying again.

Law shrugged. "It's just always been there. But counting on the mix of things I'm learning now, I had to learn from someone. Having a routine buries all those memories."

"I would've rode my motorcycle all around the world, then," Zoro said, mystified as Sanji tried again.

"He's not from this country," Sanji told Law.

" _How in the fuck_ do you get so lost as a ghost that you misplace your entire country?" Law asked Zoro with a startled expression.

"I don't know! Stop bringing it up!" Zoro snapped at Sanji, swatting the back of his head. He then effortlessly performed the same action on the pamphlets Sanji was working on and sent them scattering. The nurse shouted out as the paper brochures rained over her. She popped out of her chair and shouted out a name with frustration, leaning over the desk to look over it.

"Good work," Law told Zoro. "Most times, the living can't hear us – I can sit there and talk myself hoarse to a patient – "

"Do you _ever_? Because we don't see you saying anything," Sanji said snidely, turning his attention to the stack of files the nurse had piled up earlier as she cleaned up the brochures with a huff.

Law rolled his eyes, leaning against the desk. "So talking to them normally isn't going to catch their attention, but like I said before, there are a rare few that can. I once ran into a man that heard me cursing him out for shitting all over me when I'd been very clear about him removing the lightbulb himself."

"I…don't want to hear details of that story," Zoro decided as Sanji frustrated himself with his efforts on moving the stack.

"Anyway, once I realized only a certain few could hear me, I made a note to pay more attention to these fuckers, but I seemed to not have retained that information," Law said, patting his notepad. "So it's up to you to find one of these people on your own."

Once the nurse set the stacked brochures aside, she reset in her chair. Unable to complete his task, Sanji sighed heavily, rolling his shoulders. He then made to hit the stack with frustration when he ended up knocking them slightly to the left with the gesture, the nurse looking over quickly from the side of her eye. Sanji lit up. He reached out and pushed the stack aside, the nurse reacting with a light gasp before standing.

Law reached out and knocked Sanji's head with the palm of his hand. "You can't do that while they're looking."

"STOP HITTING ME!" Sanji shouted out with frustration, rubbing his head as the nurse rose up from her chair with a light squeal, running away from the station. "WHY CAN'T I?"

"If you were living, what would you think if you saw that?" Law asked him flatly.

"That it was a ghost!"

Law moved his hand, indicating for him to go on. "And this isn't good _because_ …?"

Puzzled, Sanji stopped rubbing his head to frown. Seeing that he wasn't getting it, Law pointed behind them to the monitor standing close to the wall, watching them. Sanji jumped and hastily put distance between them while Law straightened away from the counter.

"Every wrong thing you'll do those things show up, and catching the attention of the living like this happens to be one of them," Law explained, walking off to another row of doors, Sanji looking nervously behind him as Zoro followed along. "Scaring the living isn't on my to-do list, so it's not something I'll do intentionally. But because you guys have some mission you want to do, consider that part of it."

"Then how do we find people that can hear us?" Sanji asked with frustration. "Do we go back out onto the streets and just – find them?"

"It's not my intention, so you do you," Law said, marching over to the bedside of a heavy woman, her breathing exercises being noisily exerted. He examined the white board over her head, then looked at the clock on the wall. The charts around her told the trio that she was expecting twins. Law grabbed both shoulders, yanking her from the bed. Once the machines sounded out as he let go of her with one hand, reaching for a door with the other. Her presence of mind had her scrambling back to bed, intending on realigning herself with her still form, but he grabbed her with both hands, and kicked her through the open door, slamming it shut. Even as he walked away from it, the sound of frantic pounding emerged above the air of emergency through the professionals that flooded the room. Since it didn't seem like he was going to target the babies left behind, the pair followed after Law with shell-shocked expressions.

"Why do you decide who gets to die?" Sanji asked angrily, noticing that the monitors lingered behind as they moved onto a different corridor. He saw that they weren't following. As they turned the corner, he paused to see them sinking into the shadows without any sound or motion to make.

 _Did his wrongs get righted after making a choice like that_? he wondered.

"I don't know," Law said with a bewildered look. "I never stopped to think about it."

"Well, do so! _Law_!"

Law looked back at Sanji with a frown, then looked at Zoro. "Why is he like this?" he asked him touchily.

Zoro shrugged. "I just met him, I don't know..."

"You two _just_ met?" Law asked with a puzzled tone. "And you're banding together to find out the name of one boy you also just met?"

"I'm lost, so…I kinda don't care where I end up. I don't think I can find my way back again," Zoro answered honestly. "This is my afterlife, now. In Hell for whatever I did to piss somebody off…"

"I hope in your future you get so lost you won't have to hear this nagging for the duration of your dead period," Law told him with some sympathy.

Sanji mimicked him, turning to look at the trio clustered inside of a room where a woman held onto the railings with both hands, panting tightly. He walked up to the three, bending to say "hello" to all of them. Their conversation continued while Law looked the woman over. He reached in to pull the baby out, Zoro grimacing as he looked away. Law only unwrapped the cord around the baby's neck, the small being exhaling noisily before he repositioned the baby back inside of the woman. He opened the door leading up from the floor, and the pair followed after a glance back at the woman that continued panting.

On the fifth floor, Law veered into a room, glancing at the young man sitting at the edge of the bed. He was holding onto his head with both hands and talking to two others that were seated in there as well. All of them were wearing logo shirts, backpacks, and had dust on their clothes. Law looked away from the younger man with a lift of his eyebrows. He pointed at them grandly.

"You're in luck," he said. "Ghost hunters."

" _Keen_!" Sanji cried, then lowered his voice as Zoro looked at the trio with surprise. Rushing up to them, Sanji said, "Listen, we have a problem – "

"They can't hear you," Law pointed out, Sanji pausing in mid-speech once he realized this was so. "Follow them out."

"Will you come with us?" Zoro asked him, Law looking at him with a frown.

"Of course not! I'm busy here. But if you do find my name, that would be appreciated," he said, strangely sweet.

"After how you treated me, _hell_ no," Sanji told him as Law chuckled, turned to the younger man, and swatted his forehead with a palm. The man blinked owlishly, then lowered his hands. The bruise remained, but he exclaimed that he didn't feel any more pain.

"You sure you're not an angel?" Zoro asked Law curiously.

Nearly an hour later, the pair followed closely after the trio leaving the hospital. Instead of marching through the mob as they had earlier, they followed them along the main path of the garage tower, and loaded up in their vehicle with them.

"What do ghost hunters actually _do_?" Sanji then asked Zoro curiously.

"I think they do what their names say," Zoro answered seriously, looking behind him. There was equipment in the back; camera cases, laptops, a backpack with more logos on them. His eyes lifted once he realized that there was another person sitting there, arms spread out over the seat and legs crossed daintily. His vision traveled up from those legs to the face that looked back at him with a wide smile – at least he thought it was a smile. It was hard to tell of a skeleton. He shrieked noisily, jerking forward, Sanji choking on his spit as he reacted.

"Yo ho ho ho ho!" the skeleton laughed, Sanji whirling around with surprise. He shrieked as well. "Ghosts? In the eye of the storm? What's with this generation?"

"What is that?" Sanji cried, pushing Zoro in front of him, the pair of them tumbling over one of the men and landing atop of the middle console. "That skeleton is _talking_!"

" _It is_?" the skeleton reacted fearfully, looking behind him with a startled jerk. He then leapt forward to escape whatever it was they were looking at, both men pushing at him while the occupants of the car continued on with their conversation, unaware of what was happening. By the time the two had managed to kick the skeleton back to its seat, all of them were panting hard. Sanji scrambled to the front passenger seat while Zoro pressed himself against driver's seat, winded.

"Don't scare me like that, I've seen some things," the skeleton told them wearily, wiping imaginary sweat from its forehead.

"You're a talking skeleton! What the hell was worse than that?" Sanji sputtered.

" _I am_?" Brook asked, horror heavy in his tone as he touched himself.

"Look into a mirror!"

Zoro shook his head furiously. "No way, Duran Duran. This guy is too far gone, we're not looking for _his_ name!"

"I already know my name, good day to you, sir," the skeleton told Zoro peevishly. "It's Brook. And you are…?"

"Zoro."

"Good day, Zoro! You?"

Sanji answered him, crawling back onto the middle console. "Oh, so… _oh_! You know all this stuff already!"

"I do," Brook said, crossing his legs once more. "Unfortunately, I met these guys somewhere far away from here, and I took such a liking to them that I can't pull away. I really have no desire to return home."

"So…that's what ghost hunters do?" Sanji questioned curiously. "They find ghosts and take their kill home with them?"

"Were we set up?" Zoro wondered with stiff dismay.

"No, ghost hunters do not _hunt_ ghosts for taking," Brook explained patiently. "They hunt ghosts for answers. They are interested in the afterlife – is there one? Why are they there? Are they able to communicate?"

"This is so much to absorb," Sanji told Zoro. "I went from having a routine to learning all sorts of things in what feels like a space of time."

Zoro nodded gravely. "All for a name."

"Names are important," Brook agreed. "If you don't remember your name, you can't remember who you were. Living your afterlife in that sense will lead you nowhere, and you'll become a residual haunting! Having a name allows you a tie to who you were as a living being, and gives you a sense of recognizance to understanding your new world. It sounds like you're both on that right track – you've truly stumbled onto a group of good people! I'm sure they could be the ones to help you."

Gesturing at the trio, Brook said, "Meet Luffy, Sabo and Franky. Good group of guys! There's also Nami, Ussop and cute little Carrot as a volunteer! They've traveled all around the country investigating pretty intense places, looking for communication! I'm sure if you hang around, it will be Ussop that will hear you – he can hear _us_."

"Why?" Sanji asked curiously. "Why extend a search all around the country – hey, maybe they can help _this_ guy get home!"

"Stop talking about it!" Zoro snarled at him as he snickered.

"Are you lost, little one?" Brook asked with concern. "That looks like a bad fall you've taken."

"Motorcycle," Zoro said gruffly.

"A doctor helped us find you guys, and our problem is simple – we're looking for the name of a boy," Sanji said. "He left the hospital – "

"Why would he do that?" Brook cried. "The hospital is one of the few places where you are assisted into the light!"

"' _Assisted'_ is a nice word compared to what we saw," Zoro mumbled, Sanji wincing. "That doctor truly is something else…"

"He's a scary one," Brook said with a titter. "I've had the displeasure of meeting him twice. Luffy is always in there for some reason for another. I now stay in the car for safety reasons."

"Why don't you just…go?" Sanji asked curiously. "If he's the door keeper – "

"He keeps opening the _bottom_ door," Brook whispered.

After seeing what they had, Sanji and Zoro looked at each other fitfully. Finally seating himself correctly in his seat, Zoro asked, "Where do those doors lead?"

"Hell if I know! I'm not going to see for myself, ho ho ho ho!" Brook laughed, relaxing back into his seat. "I'm having too much fun here."

The apartment complex was riddled with people – as they unloaded themselves, the trio still talking amongst each other, Brook reached out and caught Sanji and Zoro, holding onto them both by the collars of their shirts. Perplexed as to why they were being treated this way, they had to follow Brook from the car after the trio, noting that their surroundings were so much brighter and lighter than the hospital area.

"I don't want to let you go," Brook said. "You'll find yourself wandering off to complete your routine. You have a mission, don't you? To locate a name?"

"Yes," Sanji said. "I actually haven't felt the need to return to my routine since we met him. We walked right off to the hospital without each of us actually going there."

"Extraordinary! I don't meet very many ghosts that can wander free on their own. Do you think that boy is still there?" Brook asked.

"I told him to wait there."

"Ghosts have very short memories," Brook warned him. "He could have wandered away by now."

"But," Zoro interrupted, giving them a clueless frown, "the kid doesn't know his name, yet he wandered out from the hospital on his own like we did."

" _Oh_ ," Sanji said slowly, understanding filling his face. He understood what Zoro was saying. When he was nameless, he'd wandered his routine without venturing into any thought to things outside of it. Zoro had been following his – so it would make sense that a sick boy who had died _in_ the hospital would remain _in_ the hospital to follow his routine until interrupted.

"But after my accident, I wandered from my school, the store and home," Sanji said. "And you wandered, too. Maybe the store was a part of his routine."

"With how long I've lived," Brook said, "the routine a ghost follows is the one set to him the day of his death. Perhaps he was allowed from the hospital to the store the day he passed. I suppose we won't truly know until he learns his name…"

The apartment Brook led them to was located on the third floor of the building, and voices seemed to assault them immediately.

"That is residual energy," Brook explained patiently, seeing their discomfort. "Because this is an apartment building, all the energy built and left behind by the living is trapped here within these walls, going no where but building up pressure. It's noticeable by the living, but very uncomfortable for us dead. It's not harmful. It doesn't mean it's haunted – it only means that the energy left behind repeats itself over and over until it simmers out. They've yet to find a solution to that particular problem. Ghost hunters are so very fascinating!"

Walking through the closing door, they were treated to the sight of a very messy apartment. Yet two television screens filled one wall with various wiring coming out of it, a wall shelf full of various electronic knickknacks lying around it. The kitchen was a mess, with one person standing inside of with takeout boxes, and the image of them wavered in place. Zoro and Sanji gave the images a puzzled look as Brook paused just inside of the entry way. He then slumped to the ground, Sanji and Zoro following suit moments later as their energy abruptly left them.

Brook managed to point up at the wall, gurgling. There were three paper signs attached to the wall there, along with a mirror. Neither man had any idea what the symbols met, but it glowed with a sharp yellow intensity, fizzling noisily.

"These…are…bad…for ghosts," he managed to eke out. "They…block us…for…their…protection…"

"I…wanna nap…" Sanji whined, looking to Zoro and finding him already sleeping in an uncomfortable position. He reached out and hit him impatiently before rolling onto his stomach, squinting as he viewed the moving bodies ahead of them. "Which…is…Ussop?"

Brook pointed in the direction. "I…hear…uhg…him…"

Gathering his breath, Sanji heaved out the name – it left him in a sputter, his energy allowing his torso to collapse to the floor. Cupping hands around his mouth, Sanji hollered for Ussop once more. Brook crawled away from the apartment, inhaling deeply once he was a safe distance from the doorway.

"There might be too much noise for them to hear you," Brook said, scratching his hair. "Destiny 2 just came out. They like to play video games. I love those things. You can wander as you please all around the place and they'd never notice!"

"You can anyway, right?" Sanji asked him skeptically, pulling Zoro behind him as he made his way to Brook. "Because we're ghosts."

"Not exactly," Brook confessed. "Now that the living is more attuned to the afterlife, they can actually spot us faster."

Sanji kicked Zoro impatiently as Brook echoed Ussop's name with his own voice. " _Wake up_! This is no time to sleep!"

"I forgot how good these feel," Zoro mumbled against his arm. "Lemme alone."

"Ghosts don't get tired! We don't feel good, either!" Sanji exclaimed. "We don't feel nothing!"

"Ah, ah, ah," Brook corrected. "The longer we're aware of ourselves as ghosts, we can remember old feelings as we would when we are dead."

Sanji looked at him with a frown, tapping his lips. With a start he reached into his left pocket, withdrawing a case of cigarettes and a book of matches. He shouted out with glee, startling Zoro from his lethargy as he lit one. He inhaled deeply and blew out, shooting smoke upward with a gusty exhale.

" _Nasty_ ," Zoro complained, covering his nose. "I didn't miss that smell!"

"God, I feel like I can breathe again," Sanji moaned, taking another inhale of a cigarette. Brook hollered out for Ussop once more before turning his sightless eyes on them.

"If only I had a nose to remember smoke," he said wistfully. He then looked up, squinting his eyes to see someone venturing near them. He patted Zoro atop of the head quickly. "It's him! Ussop!"

"USSOP!" Sanji shouted, rising to his feet and peering into the blurry mass ahead of him. "Can you hear me?"

"I hear you," they heard a man said nervously, hushing those behind him. "Brook?"

"I'm here!" Brook said joyously. "And I found friends!"

"Take down this shitty sign so we can talk to you!" Sanji demanded, using his cigarette to point with.

"Brook!" someone snapped out sharply. "You were supposed to move on!"

Brook laughed merrily.

Before Sanji could explain himself any further, a monitor pulled out from the entry way. Brook gasped, jumping to his feet and climbing onto Sanji's back while Zoro shot to his. The unmoving face watched them as its body slid away from the wall, stretching its arms out to form a barrier. A monitor appeared suddenly behind them, wrapping its lengthening arms around them with a hot squeeze. They didn't have time to cry out - the apartment disappeared, and the three found themselves outside the complex, stumbling slightly in the grass. Once they were able to determine their surroundings, the sense of wrongness began to drift over them. The instinct to return to their routines had them picturing familiar places until Brook touched their shoulders with his bony hands. The gesture only seemed to root them in place, forcing those feelings away.

"Ussop," Zoro said slowly. " _That's_ the guy's name."

"The boy's name," Sanji whispered to himself, fists clenched. "No, the boy _has_ his name. Find the doctor's name. Find Ussop. Ussop can hear us."

"We were kicked out again," Brook sighed, drumming his fingers atop of their shoulders. "It happens. We aren't supposed to contact the living so freely."

"That's what the monitors do?" Zoro asked curiously.

"Sends us to a place where we'll forget why we were even there in the first place." Brook then perked up. "But never fear! I remember!"

"The doctor never experienced this."

"It doesn't seem like he's ever interacted with those outside of patient care," Brook said. "If he had, then he would've been lost like the horde."

" _Now_ what?" Sanji cried impatiently. "How dare that guy kick us out before we get a chance to talk to him?"

"Now, calm down," Zoro advised him, hands out. "There's another way about this."


	4. Chapter 4

Fish of Knowledge: It's such a weird story! But I hope it makes you wonder...

 **Part Four:**

 **Treat the Living Respectfully**

* * *

"We need to get back there," Sanji said with frustration, striding back towards the building. "They are the only ones who heard me!"

"You're so _intimidating_ with those shoulder pads," Zoro laughed, causing Sanji to snap his head around to glare at him.

"Well, there _might_ be a problem with that," Brook commented as Zoro looked up at the sky, trying to remember how the sun felt on his exposed skin. "Those things with the creepy faces aren't exactly making it easy on us. They'll eventually forget about us once we move on, so follow me. We'll wander to the places Ussop goes until he shows up. It shouldn't take that long."

"These things drag us to different places, don't they?" Zoro asked him as Sanji reluctantly turned to follow after Brook. "That's what the doctor said."

"They're quite harmless, actually. They are there to re-direct you to different places, hoping you forget what you were doing in the first place," Brook said airily, waving a hand over his shoulder. His towering height caused the pair discomfort looking up at him as he took to the sidewalk. His feet weren't touching the ground, Zoro realized.

Sanji look around himself. He had no clue what part of the city they were in, but he could see the tallest buildings in the distance. He was momentarily distracted by the sight of the modern world, which had changed significantly since he was living in it. The sound of the cars driving by carried a different sound to it that wasn't present during his time – the shape and details of houses had shifted. The sight of people wearing modern clothing made his hand clench over the material of his shirt, aware of the differences. He couldn't help but wonder what life would have been like had he survived the impact.

He hoped the boy was still in front of the grocery store.

They crossed through some landscaping trees at the edge of the complex perimeters and emerged into the parking lot of the college. Sanji was amazed that this form of travel existed - he wasn't quite sure of the mechanics to it just yet, his mind unable to scrape any further than the concept that they _could_.

"Hey, this is my school! _Radical_!" Sanji exclaimed. They were walking up from the east side of the campus, so the area was a brand new sight for him. He looked around himself with awe, the design of the campus expanded to include more decorative plants and murals, extra parking areas for the professors. "This is the time I usually come out here."

The morning had just colored the sky a different light than a few seconds ago, lighting the area up with a gentle glow. Students trudging towards the buildings were carrying steaming cups of coffee, yawning noisily. The entry way into the campus was jammed with vehicles.

"Oh, goodie!" Brook said, delighted. "Ussop is apt to wander the usual places all young men frequent. This includes the mall, fast food places, _here_ , and his friends' houses. If we can find him, we can stick to him. He's quite the scaredy cat for the talent he has, so don't scare him too intentionally."

"Time really doesn't matter for us, huh? _Tight_ ," Zoro said vaguely, discomforted as he looked behind them. But all he saw was the sprawl of the parking lot, the shrubbery they'd emerged from. "How does that even happen?"

Brook waved that away. "As long as you remember where you've been, you can return there. That's why I stick around with those guys. Attached to them, I get to see more of a world than I ever could, before!"

"Unless you get lost," Zoro mumbled, reddening a little.

"When did you die, Brook?" Sanji asked curiously as he opened one of the glass doors to a sprawling hall to let them through. Zoro passed through the glass windows while Brook thanked Sanji politely, half of his upper body passing through the doorframe and windows above. Sanji rolled his eyes at himself, releasing the door to slip through. " _Sorry_ , habit."

"You're such a scrub," Zoro told him with amusement. Sanji gave him a puzzled look.

"My era consisted of pirates sailing the seas in search of new worlds!" Brook said cheerfully. "Unfortunately, I attracted an unforgivable illness and passed away doing what I'd enjoyed most…"

He seemed to wiggle with delight once they came into the main lobby of the college building, where students sluggishly drifted to the cafeteria, or lingered around small tables, gentle voices filling up to the high ceiling. Now that he recognized the area, Sanji drifted as he normally did to his table, Zoro following along with a yawn.

"Look at all the _beautiful_ women!" Brook cried, darting from one to another to inhale deeply of one, and admired another's jean clad behind. "That never changes! They're so bountiful, so fresh, so young!"

"So what did you die of?" Zoro asked, annoyed at the change in topic.

"I contracted syphilis. And a woman took me to paradise – literally! Oh, ho ho ho ho ho!"

"Aw man, that's a stupid way to die!"

"It wasn't glorious, but contracting it and dying because I was in the throes of it was something I can't complain about!"

"Ugh, that's so wack! Pervert!"

"So Ussop should be here, right?" Sanji asked, sitting down at a table as Zoro and Brook took to opened seats nearby.

"He'll come here," Brook assured him, reaching up to pat at his afro. "He needs caffeine to function."

"I sit here all the time, I never saw you guys," Sanji said, propping his face up with his hands as he looked at the students coming into the cafeteria.

"Ghosts don't usually see each other, even with obvious wounds," Brook said. "We can pass right by each other without noticing because of our routines, and we're not conditioned to see beyond it. Only those that are cognizant of themselves can do so. So it's a miracle that you were able to do this."

"That doctor saw us right away, but he just now learned part of his name," Zoro said.

"We've gotta find his, too," Sanji said. "Just so I can rub it in his stupid, obnoxious face."

"Like I said, the doctor's a different sort than us. Ah, there he is!" Brook cried, standing and waving his arms as Ussop hurried into the cafeteria. Brook slumped. "He's wearing his damned headphones again!"

Sanji left his seat and hurried over to the man – the very same curly haired man that he'd faced before when Zoro found him again. As he approached, he could hear the tinny sounds of music coming from the headset Ussop wore, and Ussop was intensely focused on the glass display of pastries with a couple of energy drinks in hand.

"Hey, hey, we're here, now. Brook and us," Sanji said, keeping up with him. Ussop didn't acknowledge him, fumbling with his wallet to find money. Sanji tried snatching it from him, struggling in vain to perform the tasks he needed in order to actually touch him. Seeing his struggle, Zoro rose from his table and walked over.

Zoro pushed Sanji to the side and swatted Ussop upside the head. The living being jerked forward with a surprised cry as Brook whirled to look at him with horror. Looking around wildly, Ussop's face reflected utter surprise as he saw that there was no one standing around him, his music audible as he pulled his headphones down around his neck.

"Say my name!" Brook cried hurriedly.

"Brook?" Ussop asked quizzically, sweat beading upon his forehead. He lowered his voice to a whisper once he saw other people glancing in his direction.

A monitor began to slip out from the shadows of a vending machine nearby, Sanji giving a curse of dismay. The crackle of glass shifting together alerted them to other monitors popping up nearby.

"Say the rest! Hurry!" Brook prompted.

"Not in public!" Ussop whined, looking pained as a student looked at him quizzically. The monitor began to shift away from the vending machine, another rising up from the shadows of the floor.

"We're going to get kicked out again!" Zoro said with frustration.

" _Say it_!" Brook demanded.

Ussop looked reluctant to say what was being demanded of him, thick lips pursed as he trembled. "Not at school!" he hissed with trouble, giving a nervous wave at a kid that was looking at him with a puzzled expression.

Brook settled up against his shoulder, whispering, "It's urgent!"

"What does he have to say?" Sanji asked Brook, looking at the monitors as they began to draw close to them.

Ussop stiffened. "Is that…another one…?"

"SAY IT!" Brook bellowed close to his ear, Ussop jerking backward with a startled gasp, dropping his things and causing a slight commotion as others looked over with startled expressions. Embarrassed, Ussop abandoned his intentions and hurried out from the cafeteria, Brook, Sanji and Zoro following after him. "You need to say it, it's terribly important!"

"You were supposed to have moved on!" Ussop hissed back, trying not to draw any attention to himself as he pushed his way through the throng, students looking at him questionably for his forceful actions.

" _Hurry_!" Brook urged, seeing that the monitors were drawing after them.

"SAY IT, FOR FUCK'S SAKE, WATSON, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?" Sanji shouted at Ussop, causing Ussop to trip over his own feet and fall to the floor. "SAY IT RIGHT NOW BEFORE I GET PISSED!"

"WHO IS TALKING TO ME, BROOK?" Ussop cried out with panic, struggling to look around himself for the ghost as others paused in mid-step to look at him with visibly rising confusion.

Brook prompted the ghosts to answer, looking at the gathering monitors with a panic. Both of them answered in near unison, Ussop blinking rapidly as he struggled to concentrate. Whispers were rising around him as his fellow students watched him, sure he was in the throes of a breakdown.

"Sanzo?" he repeated dumbly. Brook urged the pair to repeat themselves, the monitors suddenly halting in mid-movement.

"Sanji."

"Zoro."

Ussop's mouth opened and closed a few times, eyes darting in the direction the voices were coming from. He was regarded suspiciously by other students, so he nervously picked himself up, patting his pockets to make sure he still had his wallet and phone. He swallowed tightly, then whispered tentatively, "Sanji and Z-Zo…row?"

The monitors began to slip away, Sanji watching them with bewilderment. Zoro corrected Ussop impatiently, repeating his name over and over until Ussop repeated it correctly.

"They're my newest friends," Brook told Ussop as the man nervously dusted himself off, then pushed through the doors to get out of there, his face red with embarrassment. The others followed, hastening their steps just to keep up with his.

"You were supposed to have moved on!" Ussop hissed from the side of his mouth, a little more comfortable talking out loud with less of a crowd around him.

"Look, if you can hear us, then we have a request to make of you," Sanji said from his left.

"I don't do 'requests'," Ussop snapped in that direction, his eyes darting about.

"Where'd those guys go?" Zoro asked curiously, looking behind him. Upon hearing his voice, Ussop whirled to look in his direction, seeing nothing. He didn't understand what had been said, the language unfamiliar with him, but Zoro's voice was as loud and clear as the others'.

"They will leave only if it's apparent the living has purpose with us," Brook explained. "With Ussop asking for your names, he's inviting you to interact with him."

"But at the apartment, they – "

"They weren't so inviting. They scolded me, which gives them the power to remove us," Brook sniffled, teeth chattering.

Wearing a confused expression, Zoro nodded so he could process that.

"You _have_ to. We're trying to find a name at the hospital, and the doc doesn't know that other tower. Medical records, he said," Sanji continued speaking to Ussop, not hearing what had transpired between Brook and Zoro.

"What 'doc'?" Ussop repeated, pausing in mid-step so suddenly that Sanji had to take a few steps back to stand at his side.

"Never mind the doc," Brook told Sanji. To Ussop he said, "They're looking for a name of a friend who'd escaped from the hospital. It's urgent that we encourage him back to find the light."

"You know I don't like going there," Ussop said fretfully.

"Maybe we can take _you_ to _him._ You can ask him yourself," Sanji suggested.

"Ask _who what_?" Ussop repeated, bewildered.

Sanji tried to kick him, but his leg passed through Ussop. " _The boy_! The boy can't remember his name!"

"The boy, Ussop," Zoro repeated, unaware that Ussop couldn't understand him. "We need the boy's name – otherwise, this guy will nag us to the ends of the fucking universe!"

Sanji gasped in outrage, looking at him. Ussop wasn't sure what was said but it sounded venomous and dangerous, so he shivered. He shook his head wildly as he started walking again. "Oh, no no no! I don't do names!"

"What's your damage? Just do it," Sanji insisted, following him.

"Why is he so afraid of us?" Zoro asked Brook, following along behind them. "We're harmless. He's totally buggin' for no reason."

"You're _ghosts_!" Brook laughed.

"If he can talk to us, he needs to take a chill pill already," Sanji growled. Ussop repeated that phrase dumbly. "You can't be afraid if this is a common thing for you."

"You're _ghosts_! It never gets easy!" Ussop exclaimed, glancing behind him. His raised voice caused a couple of heads to lift from the nearby bench, and he hurried on with a look of embarrassment. With his voice lowered he added, "It's the concept of ghosts, _dead people_ talking to me that freaks me out! No one else can hear you!"

"But _this_ is important. If we can find his name and return him to the hospital, the doc can send him off."

"What _'doc'_?" Ussop cried with frustration. "He sounds scary!"

"Terrifying," Brook agreed. "He takes the souls of the living without giving them a chance to protest."

" _For no reason_?" Ussop near shrieked, hugging his chest with horror. "A malevolent ghost?"

"It's a _hospital_ , stuff like that happens!" Sanji stressed impatiently. "Forget about him, it's the boy we're focused on."

"Who hit me?" Ussop then asked, reaching back to rub his head.

"Zoro did. Enough about him. The boy needs to be returned to the hospital, and he's actually at the store waiting for us, so let's just go there," Sanji said, pointing away from the college.

"I can't just leave my classes to chase after this! If word gets out that I'm helping a _ghost_ , more are sure to approach me! I can't handle that sort of heart attack!" Ussop protested, looking around himself helplessly. "Brook! Why are you ratting me out like this?"

"They went home with Luffy and the others the other day," Brook said. "They practically fitted themselves on my lap like lost children – "

"There was no lap sitting!" Zoro shouted at him.

Ussop cried out with terror upon hearing the snap given in another language, bringing up images of a terrifying person. He then took off in a run as they looked after him with surprise.

Sanji ran after him. "You're the only one that can hear us!" he shouted after him, reaching out to grab him and watching his hands sweep right through him. He growled with frustration, lengthening his stride. "You can't evade us like some chicken!"

"But I am!" Ussop cried. "I'm the biggest chicken you'll ever meet!"

"Then I'm going to filet you and dip you into the corpses of your unborn children and fry you up with a side of mashed potatoes and greens!"

Ussop shrieked with horror at the threat, returning towards the building. The others drifted after him, passing through the doors and people as Ussop ran for his class in a sweaty panic. He kept his head down and pulled his headphones up, yanking his phone out from his pocket. He texted rapidly to a group chat as he hurried to his class. With the headphones on, he could only hear the voice of the singer and the beat, and nothing more. He had just settled into his seat, notebook out when his phone vibrated with responses. Luffy's was a cheer, Franky a thumbs up and Sabo asking him to record the conversation. Of course Ussop would find no comfort from those guys, and he set his phone aside with a long exhale.

His headphones were forced down and he heard Sanji say, "I'm not giving up until you do this."

" _Stop talking to me_!" Ussop exclaimed wildly.

"I'm going to make your living life _miserable_ until you help me."

"You shouldn't be so scared of Boy George," Ussop heard Zoro's voice scoff from nearby, a couple of students looking back at Ussop once they realized he was alone. "He's a Culture Club loving pansy with mom khakis – "

" _You're_ a floppy haired, flannel wearing biker club reject!"

"Oh, ho ho ho ho they're a lively pair!" Brook laughed, standing over a woman with a low cut shirt.

"Why is this boy so important?" Ussop then hissed, sinking low in his seat. "He a relative?"

"No, just some kid that found us," Sanji said, leaning on his table. "But it's important he's returned to the hospital."

Ussop fiddled with his phone, aware of the looks being sent his way by the other students in the class. He began sweating once more, hands shaking as he processed this information. "Why is this name so important?" he then whispered. "Just take him back!"

"That's what I've been telling him," Zoro told Ussop, leaning forward in his chair as someone sat down on him. Ussop didn't understand a word Zoro said, but he listened because he had no choice. "But he's insistent on it. He's a terrible person who won't let anyone find peace until this task is completed."

"Look, my original purpose in life was to live the best life and be cool about it, but now that I am dead, now that I know my _name_ , I can't just let this whole routine thing take over that poor kid's afterlife," Sanji said with a huff. "I have to spread the word."

"It sounds so exciting!" Brook commented as he drifted towards another woman, admiring her backless sweater. He shivered, causing Zoro to look at him with disgust.

"I've never heard of ghosts helping each other like this," Ussop mumbled. "Everyone is so set in their own lane without drawing trouble from others – "

"That's what I'm saying!" Sanji exclaimed. "Everyone is caught up in their routine after death that they forget who they were in the first place. Once you remember, then you have a purpose."

"Routines are the reason behind most of your investigations," Brook told Ussop. "These guys are different. They're like me!"

"We found your body and buried you, so why aren't you gone yet?" Ussop hissed in his direction, a couple of people looking at him questioningly. Avoiding their expressions, he dropped his head to his table, whispering, "I can't do this right now, I'm in class! I need this credit!"

"Fine," Sanji said, sitting on the table nearby with his arms crossed. "But we're not leaving until you agree to do this. It's a simple task – "

"Then do it yourselves!"

"If we could, we could've. But the hospital expanded since the doc was last aware of it, so all he said the information is located in the medical records of the building, and we can't move around there like you'd think. We followed him around because of _his_ routine. I'm not familiar with the place, Zoro's from another country, so he ain't if any help. There's also monsters in there..."

Ussop paled. A ghost warning him of other _monsters_?

"Like…demonic entities?" he whimpered.

"Will you just drop that part?" Zoro asked Sanji impatiently. "It doesn't matter, now!"

Ussop furrowed his head, finger up. "Wait. Hold up. _Two_ of you are speaking English. The other I can hear, but I don't know their language."

"I sailed with English sailors on my last route," Brook told the confused pair. "We can understand each other just fine – but if Zoro's addressing the living, his language will be apparent."

"Then don't talk to him," Sanji told Zoro. "You're useless, no one likes you."

Zoro rolled his eyes.

Shifting in his chair, Ussop asked tentatively, "But you all understand each other just fine…? How odd."

"Language and culture doesn't matter back here," Brook told him, inhaling deeply of a woman's hair, Sanji looking at him with horror. "We're dead."

"Then we wait here until you're done with school," Sanji decided, tentatively sitting atop of a table. "Then you listen to the rest of it."

"I texted my buddies, and they're aware of my problem," Ussop mumbled, looking at his phone. "I have a free period after this – they want to meet in the parking lot. They'll decide whether they can help."

"Bangin'!" Sanji exclaimed, reaching up to brush his hair from his face and scraping his palm with his cigarette. He withdrew it from his mouth with surprise. "Hey, I'm still smoking!"

"That is a _nasty_ habit," Zoro told him.

"You had it in your mouth this entire time," Brook told Sanji patiently.

"That's so _radical_ ," Sanji said with a sigh, tasting his nicotine. Zoro snickered, causing Sanji to look back at him with warning.

If he concentrated, Ussop could smell the scent of cigarettes, but it was so vague it could be coming off from another student near him.

: :

He wasn't able to concentrate on class. He heard Sanji and Zoro insult each other the entire time – while he couldn't understand a single word from Zoro, he caught English references here and there. As they spoke, with Brook's occasional input from somewhere in the distance, Ussop jotted down notes. They'd deduced that Brook was from the 19th century, escaping the unrest occurring in his native Austria. He'd sailed the seas with English pirates and somehow wound up on east coast shores – the group had come across his ghost when visiting Sabo's parents, when Brook had jokingly asked Ussop for his camera to take pictures of pretty tourists. Once Brook realized Ussop could hear him, he'd stuck to them like glue ever since.

It was hard getting rid of the guy – they'd tried exorcisms and blessings until Sabo had the luck to come across Brook's unidentified remains in a museum. It had been tough, but they were able to sneak them out and bury them on the coast to Brook's direction. They had thought that was the end of it. That had been _two years_ ago. The theory that ghosts lingered with unfinished business was bullshit.

Finding the name of a lost boy was going to be tough. Ussop would have to talk to the boy himself to get some answers, and he didn't want to. Because if _these_ ghosts were aware of him and they ended up helping him – what if they told other ghosts? The others joked that he was just like that kid on "The Sixth Sense" but he didn't want to fall into that routine of helping ghosts because ghosts were _scary_.

"I wasn't even _into_ Sinead O'Connor!" he heard Sanji cry out with exasperation. "You're such a bohunk! _YES_ I watched "Sixteen Candles"! It was fly and – NO _NOT_ LIKE THAT!"

Ussop twitched once he heard Brook start to sing one of Sinead's earlier songs. His head started to ache as the professor's voice faded slightly as he grew more attuned to these guys.

Unable to concentrate, Ussop hissed, "Keep it down! I can't hear!"

" _Ussop_ ," Sanji whispered, crouching by his chair. "In your time, what would you call a motorcycle loser with floppy hair? Give me a good name."

Ussop squeezed his eyes tight. He looked at his notes. Whispering from the corner of his mouth, he asked, "What era is he from?"

"Nineties. He looks like a baby in adult clothes."

"What country is he from?" Ussop asked, puzzled.

"He says Japan."

"What's he doing _here_?"

"He's lost. He said he drove here on a damn motorcycle."

" _How can a ghost get that lost_?"

"That's what I'm saying!" Sanji laughed as the other one sputtered indignantly. At least, Ussop thought Zoro was indignant.

"Brook at least had an excuse," Ussop whispered. "He was on a boat!"

"He's a _loser_ \- stop. Stop pulling on my – don't give me a wedgie! STOP!"

Ussop covered his ears with both hands as Brook laughed from somewhere in the back of the room. He couldn't see the ghosts wrestling but he could hear every word from them. It made one of his eyes twitch. He rose up from his chair with a slap of his hands on his table. "You're all driving me fucking nuts!"

At the attention drawn to him, he froze in horror. Zoro released Sanji's underwear, both of them looking at Ussop with curiosity. Sanji kneed Zoro in the thigh, causing him to curse. "Look what you did, idiot. He _hates_ you now."

" _Me_? You're the shrieking about like a little girl!" Zoro hissed back.

Ussop hastily gathered his things and hurried out of the room.

"Are we going to the store, now?" Sanji asked, huffing and puffing as he rearranged his underwear, Zoro and Brook following after them. "Let's go to the store. It's on Third and Riley."

"That Raley's?" Ussop asked, blinking. "It's a Raley's, right?"

"No, it's a Pay and Save."

"I've never heard of that!"

"Right, right, well, _whatever_ , it's there on Third and Riley and I know it's still there because I still go there," Sanji insisted.

"This is so fun!" Brook cried cheerily. "We're on another adventure!"

"Brook! Go home!" Ussop snapped at him, a couple of people looking up at him with surprise as he hurried past them. Out the doors, he huffed, "You guys are turning into a real pain in the ass! You're so damned noisy!"

"It's been awhile since we got to talking to anyone," Zoro said. "At least for me it is."

"He can't understand you, so don't waste our time trying to talk to him," Sanji told him impatiently. Zoro reached out and pushed his head, Sanji kicking him in response. After separating from him, he caught up to Ussop, saying, "All you need to do is get more information from the boy, then we can take him back to the hospital. It's not easy getting in, but we can do this."

"Unless they drive us in through the garage, because I really don't want to repeat the first time," Zoro said, shoving his hands into his pockets.

"That place gives me a severe migraine," Ussop muttered, rubbing his long nose. "There's too many voices! I can't even imagine what it's like inside! There must be ghosts all over the place!"

"It's surprisingly empty," Sanji said. "That doctor makes sure everyone goes where they're supposed to. He said 'we' and suggested there's others doing what he does, so I wouldn't worry about any numbers."

Ussop really couldn't convince himself any further of that comfort. "You mentioned there were monsters in there?" he asked, opening up his car door to shove his things into his back seat before hopping into the front. He assumed they situated themselves inside, Brook telling Zoro to "buckle up. "You're _ghosts_! You don't need to!"

"Yeah. Ghouls and monitors. He said there were ghouls everywhere, but we've never run into them outside of the hospital," Sanji said, pulling on his seatbelt and then realizing that he could. Ussop tried not to react, but it made his heart jump with surprise seeing the seat belt tugged upon by invisible forces.

"I remembered how to do it!" Sanji hissed to Zoro, shaking him before Zoro headbutted him. Blood splattered over the windows, causing Brook to shriek.

"Don't worry, that's my blood," Zoro assured him while Sanji looked at the window with disgust. "I get it everywhere."

Ussop shivered, pulling out his phone as he activated the car by push button. Once it was running, he reached out to the dash and sought out a number to call as he settled himself in the seat. Once Luffy answered, he said, "I'm going to the Raley's on Third and Riley. They're too noisy – just meet me there."

"With all the equipment?" Luffy asked skeptically.

" _Don't_ bring the equipment, I'm just going to talk to someone. Look, just reread my texts and meet me there. It should take me about twenty minutes to get there," Ussop said with a sigh, pulling out from his parking spot. "I need to get this over with – you don't understand, they're noisy!"

"They sound great! Are they with you now? Hi, guys!" Luffy then called out, Brook answering merrily. "Is Brook still with you?"

"He says 'hi'," Ussop said on another heavy sigh.

"Brook! You were supposed to go into the light!"

"I'm not ready!" Brook exclaimed.

"He says he's not ready and stop talking to him," Ussop ordered stubbornly. "Just meet me there. The sooner I can do this, the sooner I can concentrate on my classes."

"This is so _rad_ ," Sanji said happily, looking out the window.

"The boy better be there, or else we're fucked," Zoro said. "Who knows how much time had passed since we told him to stay."

"He said he would," Sanji assured him. "I believe him, kids don't lie."

Once they pulled into the parking lot, they realized that the boy was missing.


	5. Chapter 5

**Part Five:**

 **Be Aware of Your Surroundings**

* * *

As Sanji searched inside the grocery store for the boy, Zoro and Brook sat out on the curb in front. Ussop stood nearby with his hands in his pockets, unsettled by the task he was taking on. While he knew the ghosts were around, it was not being able to see them that made him feel awkward. Between traffic and the normal sounds of the living, ghost voices were nearly lost within the static. He strained his ears, struggling to stay attuned to their voices.

Brook rose from the pavement, brushing off his trousers and jacket that glimmered gold at the lapels. He stood over Ussop like a streetlamp, leaning down to say, "He has yet to return."

Ussop jumped at the voice directly over his head, automatically looking up. Shivering violently, he took a step to the side, his eyes wide as dinner plates.

"It appears that the boy is missing," Brook said with concern.

"I didn't think he'd stay put for that long," Zoro muttered as he ran a hand through his floppy green hair. "If he's on his routine, waiting here for him to come back might take a long time. What if he went back to the hospital?"

"It's too bad ghosts don't have smartphones of our own," Brook said with a forlorn tone.

"What's that?" Zoro asked curiously. "How could a phone be smart?"

"Were you not around when they inserted all the powers of the internet into a phone?"

Zoro scrunched what was left of his brow. "Dial up on a phone? I don't know, that sounds kind of cool…I guess…"

Sanji walked out from the sliding doors with a frown. "He's not there, either."

Zoro looked back at him. "Did you look in _all_ aisles? Did you look in the can?"

Standing at Zoro's side, Sanji reached down and patted his head. "Let the grown-ups handle this, Chia Pet."

Zoro slapped his hand away. "Don't call me that!"

Sanji removed the cigarette from his mouth and tossed it aside. He looked back at the hospital with consideration, then looked to Brook. "We can wait here until he comes back."

"We'll be here for _weeks_!" Zoro exclaimed, rising to stand. "I waited _two weeks_ for you to come back that last time!"

"How do you know it was two weeks?" Sanji asked curiously. He looked at his watch, knowing that it didn't work.

"This one kid," Zoro said, holding up a broken finger, "dressed in the same jacket and hat had come to the cafeteria every day, minus two. I counted five times two times when you finally wandered up."

Confused, Sanji asked, "You mean you counted five _two_ times?"

Zoro thought about it, then nodded grimly. "Yeah…yeah, that's what I said."

"Then why not just say _ten times_?"

"Because he came in _five_ times in a row – _twice_!"

"Then just say that!"

"I know what I meant, and it was two weeks!"

Hearing only Sanji's end of the argument, Ussop shook his head incredulously. It seemed like this foreigner had the same mindset as Luffy did.

"Back to the subject," Brook interrupted grandly. "Oh, you'll have to speak up, Sanji, because it's difficult for Ussop to hear our voices in a setting like this one."

"Time doesn't matter, right? And Brook knows the way back to the apartment so we can take him _there when we find him_ ," Sanji finished with a shout to Ussop, hands cupping his mouth. Ussop shouted and drew away, hand clamped over that ear. Sanji snickered at his response.

"This is fun," he said to Zoro as Ussop struggled to reclaim his equilibrium.

"You're just a bully, Sanji!" Ussop snapped, flustered as a couple looked over at him as they passed by. It was frustrating that these ghosts could be so close, rattling his ears with their voices and having no proof of it. "Look, if that's what you want to do, then I'll tell those guys to take down the protection signs from the entryway. But please please _please_ don't drop by my room at night and do weird things! I beg of you!"

"A growing boy needs his sleep," Brook told Zoro and Sanji seriously.

"Unless we just want to make another trip to the hospital to see if the boy went back there?" Sanji suggested.

Brook and Ussop shook their heads quickly.

"Besides, the doc didn't even know where the records level was located, so _us_ finding it is unrealistic," Zoro said. "I'm assuming he lost his sense of direction the longer he followed his routine while the hospital expanded. He took doors that didn't fit the decor but walked through walls in the newer levels. He's following an older building's blueprints."

"Wow, you can think independently of other numbskulls?" Sanji gasped, looking at him. "Have you gone rogue against your own grass colony?"

"Oh, _eat my shorts_ …"

"Then how does he know that it's in another tower if he hadn't strayed from his route since the building expanded?" Brook asked curiously, rubbing his chin. Zoro and Sanji stared up at him for several moments, then looked at each other with puzzled expressions.

"He's not very receptive to questions and conversations," Zoro said slowly. Sanji nodded grimly in agreement. "He's kind of an asshole."

"Not all ghosts are the same," Brook continued on. "We all have our different quirks! With that being said, I'm still not going there."

Ussop furrowed his brow, listening intently to this. He was starting to understand that a ghost followed some sort of routine in the afterlife – it made sense when it came to residual hauntings, when ghosts would pass through a favored path despite the newest obstacles around it.

"Oh, these guys found us," Ussop interrupted, gesturing off to the side. Luffy and Franky were climbing out of Franky's Tundra, both of them loaded with a camera, headset and a backpack each. Ussop gave a whine and a stomp of his foot. "Oh, _god_ , I told them not to bring the equipment! Look guys, this is how it goes – they're going to run these little things called 'recorders'. It picks up your voice so they can play it back to listen to later. They can't hear you like I can – in their position, your voices only emerge as EVPs. Electronic Voice Phenomenon."

Zoro sounded it out clumsily while Sanji scrunched his brow, unsure of what those words even meant.

"Your voices can be heard within static, and the electronics pick up on it," Ussop further explained. "Now, if they had brought the spirit box, _that_ allows your voice to emerge in real time without pause but relies on radio frequencies that are sorted from random stations. They can carry an actual conversation with you then."

Zoro and Sanji looked at him blankly. Ussop could sense this, giving a frustrated frown. "Brook, do they understand what I'm saying?"

"Not a thing," Brook assured him.

"That sounds so sci-fi and yet irritating because they're not going to contribute to the conversation if they can't hear what we're saying right now," Zoro mumbled, rubbing his chin with thought. Ussop had no idea what the ghost was saying – he hoped he wasn't being threatened in some way, his expression turning nervous.

Sanji touched his throat and cleared it a few times. "Oh, I don't know, I hate the sound of my voice," he said self-consciously. "I hated hearing it on my answering machine."

"Then stop talking," Zoro suggested snidely.

"Then we'd get nowhere! We'd probably wind up in Transylvania or something, far from Kansas."

"We're not in Kansas," Brook pointed out as Luffy greeted Ussop cheerfully, waving his recorder around.

Looking around with a bright smile, Luffy said, "Hi, Brook! You rascal, you came back!"

"I did, I did!" Brook answered merrily, speaking into the recorder. He had to move his torso around to do so, keeping up with Luffy's sporadic reaches into various directions.

"What are they saying so far?" Franky asked Ussop, taking a few pictures of the parking lot, focusing especially on Ussop. Both men were wearing their logo tees again, Zoro squinting at the block printing as he slowly read aloud, 'Paranormal Kings'.

"I do not like the look of this guy," Sanji said with a sneer, facing off with Franky. With his hands on his hips, Zoro thought that Sanji looked extra dopey facing off with the taller man. "He looks mighty suspicious."

"And _you_ look like a goddamn clown trying to size up with him! What can you do, slice him to death with that feathered hair? Idiot."

Ussop said to his friends, "The boy's not here. They're going to wait here until he comes back. They're not familiar with the kid, but the loudest one keeps insisting that they take him back to the hospital."

"My name is Sanji, and I'm not _that_ loud," the blond muttered.

"Say that to his busted eardrums," Zoro said. "On a whisper, tho."

Luffy rewound and replayed his recorder while Franky processed what was being said.

"So, they're helping a little ghost boy return to the hospital at no relation to them," Franky repeated simply, glancing at his phone. "But his name is important because it gives him a chance to remember who he was."

"That's correct, sir, and when did it become cool to change yourself to fit into Rainbow Brite's world?" Sanji asked, reaching out to touch Franky's bright blue hair, then looked at Zoro with a revolted frown. "Ugh, that's _hideous_. Both of you are hideous."

"FYI, I don't care about your opinion," Zoro said as Luffy perked up, bouncing in place as he gestured at Franky to listen. Before Sanji could respond, he heard his voice sound out as a tinny whisper on the recorder that Luffy was playing back. Both of them paused as Franky and Luffy looked at each other excitedly. 'My name is Sanji, and I'm not _that_ loud' was extremely hard to hear on the small device.

Fretting, Sanji clutched his own throat with both hands. "That's _my_ voice?"

"Here, let me help you shut you up," Zoro offered while Brook leaned over the pair re-listening to the recorder. Ussop looked pained as he heard everything else clearly – he started to understand that Sanji and Zoro were quite violent with each other.

"It's so strong out here!" Franky exclaimed, his face lighting up. "We never pick up voices like this! Are they near us?"

"Two of them are trying to re-kill each other, and Brook's probably standing right up against us," Ussop muttered as Luffy started recording once more. "They're so noisy – I just don't think I can handle this for very long."

Franky looked excited. "I can enter their names in the city's registry to see who they were!"

"You won't find Zoro's name here," Ussop warned him. "Sanji's, yes, probably close to the eighties. Zoro…he's…from Japan."

"Ghosts get _lost_?" Luffy repeated skeptically as Zoro straightened from Sanji to look at him with embarrassment. "Like…how?"

"I haven't heard that part. Sanji says he comes from Japan – something about a motorcycle. They understand each other just fine," Ussop added. "There's no concept of languages in the afterlife."

"I had no idea I was dead!" Zoro exclaimed, protesting towards the men. "I don't even – I never even touched down on America, so why did I end up here? Someone moved me!"

"Leave it to you to blame _continents_ while you were driving," Sanji laughed, sitting down on the sidewalk. "We're not some sort of Pangea, here."

Zoro kicked him as Luffy rewound his recorder once more. Once he replayed it and heard 'I had no idea I was dead…' the voice faded out as the sounds of traffic swallowed it. He gave a frustrated sound as he replayed it.

"I don't know what this guy is saying, but he sounds like a _very_ angry person," Luffy decided, Sanji bursting out with a guffaw as Zoro looked offended. After replaying it, Luffy nodded. "Yep. I bet he was gruesomely murdered and left for dead and someone – maybe he was trafficked and left for dead here in America?"

"That sounds like a _very_ scary voice," Franky confirmed, shivering. "Very angry. Is he malevolent?"

"I'm _angry_ because _this_ asshole keeps teasing me!" Zoro exclaimed, red faced. Sanji laughed merrily, enjoying the misunderstanding. "I'm a _nice_ guy! I've – Brook! Tell them!"

"It's true," Brook said as he re-examined Zoro with a sort of worried air. "I don't know who you are – you could be a very angry person. Your face speaks volumes – what's left of it that is…"

"Ghosts like you give other ghosts bad names," Sanji snickered, leaning back on his elbows as Zoro glared up at Brook.

Ussop looked at Franky and Luffy. "Brook and Sanji are giving him shit, so I don't think he's that at all. He just has a strong voice – he's probably nicer than they are."

Sanji climbed to his feet. "Ussop, tell them – "

"Sanji is blasting my ear right now, record this," Ussop interrupted with a pained expression, Luffy shoving the recorder up against his shoulder. To those passing around them, the scene looked very unusual – two men crowded up against another that looked extremely uncomfortable, unmoving on the sidewalk with expensive equipment. It did cause some pause in those walking up to the doors, wondering what was happening. Ussop's face flamed with embarrassment at feeling like a sideshow.

Sanji hesitated to speak once he saw the recorder pressed up in his direction, so he cleared his throat and leaned in to speak to it clumsily. "Hello," he said politely, Zoro snorting.

Ussop shook his head with exasperation, gesturing with a finger for Luffy to rewind and listen. Sanji's voice emerged as a slightly distorted whisper, Luffy and Franky then cheering noisily as they realized that they were being addressed by the ghost.

Tapping his fingers together timidly, Sanji said, "It's different when you can actually hear your voice. I get real shy."

Zoro snorted, thumb and pointer finger against his forehead, causing Sanji to scowl at him, not knowing what that meant. Zoro then burst into loud laughter, Ussop freezing at the sound, uncomfortable with hearing it. Shoving him aside, Sanji said to Ussop, "Forget all that. Have them look for the name of a boy about…I don't know, nine or twelve – he didn't have hair, he mentioned being taken off a machine, and he liked Britney…Spears?"

Ussop relayed this to Franky, who wrote hastily on his phone as Luffy propped the recorder up once more. "He died in the nineties because he didn't know she had married some backup dancer," Sanji finished clumsily. "Oh, and he had a grandfather that lived around this store."

After relaying this, Ussop told Luffy to keep recording then said, "That's a lot to narrow down, it's going to take some time."

"We're just going to wait here – Brook can take us to your place if something changes," Sanji then assured him.

After hearing what Ussop had to say, Luffy asked, "How long's that going to take?"

"We should go back to the hospital eventually," Zoro said with reluctance. "We could be sitting here for eons waiting for that kid to come back."

Sanji lit up. "Maybe it'll be easier if they gave us a ride."

"They want a ride back to the hospital to check just in case," Ussop said. "But I'm not going there."

"Why do they need a ride?" Franky asked with a puzzled expression. "It's just right there – "

"There's a horde of spirits walking around the place that make it difficult for us to get close," Sanji said quickly, Ussop paling at the thought. Once Franky realized he was listening to something, he trailed off. "If we can go the same route _these_ guys took from the parking garage, it'll be easier for us. We just have to get to the ER, that's where we first found the doc."

"Just take them to the ER," Ussop said to Luffy and Franky. "They can find someone there that can verify that they hadn't seen the kid."

"All this effort for a ghost kid neither's related to?" Franky asked skeptically.

Ussop shrugged. "All I know is what I'm telling you – these guys are dead set on getting that kid named and returned to the hospital."

"And they found _us_ expressively to do this?" Luffy questioned with a bewildered look, rewinding his recorder. "How'd they know about us in the first place? Ussop, are you famous and you didn't tell us?"

"They found _you_ guys the hospital!" Ussop snapped at him. "They followed you home and met Brook!"

"The doc knows who you guys are," Zoro said. "He sent us to you."

"The doc found them for us!" Sanji said. "We were following him around on his rounds when he suggested we go with them. So we're getting somewhere!"

"Take your recorders with you, they keep talking about this doctor," Ussop said wearily, hand to his head. "I have a huge headache."

"Who's this 'doc' they keep talking about?" Franky asked, bewildered.

"The scary thing is, _it_ knows who _you_ guys are to direct _these_ guys to _you_!" Ussop pointed out, causing Luffy's mouth to drop open with realization. Ussop pointed at him. "It's because _you're_ always getting hurt that ghosts recognize you!"

"I'm famous," Luffy whispered to himself, delighted at the concept.

"I was in the car when they met me," Brook corrected, Ussop looking his direction automatically before he remembered he couldn't see the ghost.

"How long were you back there?" Ussop exclaimed. "Why didn't you say anything?"

"My mouth was tired," Brook complained.

"Brook's been in the car all this time with a tired mouth," Ussop muttered with irritation, Luffy lighting up. " _But_ – "

"Then let's go," Zoro decided, walking out into the street as a car passed through him. "Let's get this done because he's probably not coming back here."

"We should stay here, Ussop," Brook said. "I can keep an eye out for the boy."

"I don't want to stay here all night!"

"It won't take that long if we're just dropping them off at the ER," Franky said as Luffy put the recorder away.

"We're not on the same timeline as you guys," Sanji said hastily. "I actually don't know how long it'll take to return back here.."

"If _I_ stay here, how are these guys supposed to know what you're doing?" Ussop then asked crankily, rummaging through Luffy's backpack for a bottle of pills. "They can record and listen but it'll cause a delay in conversation and time. Look, I'll just…I'll just go with them to the hospital…"

"You will?" Luffy asked him incredulously. "I know you hate it, but…Ussop, they're ghosts. This thing they want to do doesn't make any sense.."

"Yeah, I mean…it's cool and all getting these voices, but to be pushed into doing something _we_ don't even understand?" Franky questioned skeptically. "This should be something they should figure out on their own without putting you into anymore distress. Any trip to the hospital is a pain, and…I kinda gotta go back home, anyway. We can do this another day."

"You do that you My Little Pony reject, and I will _personally_ make it difficult for you to fix your ugly hair in the morning!" Sanji threatened him, much to Ussop's amusement. "He-Man wannabe, GI Joe loving reject from the fifties!"

"It does, it does, but you don't understand! _This_ guy won't shut up," Ussop gestured in the opposite direction Sanji was standing, the blond giving him an outraged look.

"LET'S GO!" Zoro bellowed from the truck, reaching through one of the seats to honk on the horn. Franky whirled around, looking at his vehicle with surprise. But with how active the parking lot was, it was difficult to be sure if it had been his truck.

"Just…drop them off and we'll wait in the waiting room. They said there's rarely any ghosts inside, it's the outside that's troublesome," Ussop said with a heavy sigh, turning towards the truck.

"We did it, good job," Sanji told Zoro, sliding into the back seat with him as Zoro grumbled, pulling his limbs close so they wouldn't have to touch. "We can just leave them in the waiting room and _I'll_ run in, how about that? I remember where we went with him so I can go look for him. If I sent _you_ ahead with that task, we'd get nowhere."

"You're so annoying," Zoro grumbled as Brook slid in to sit against him while Ussop opened the door to climb into the seat closest to the window. The ghostly trio squished in tightly together as they made room for Ussop.

"I just don't think we have to do this," Franky said as he climbed into the driver's seat. "We're just normal guys, we record voices and get an occasional picture of ghosts. Like, we might not even be helping them. We could be interrupting them crossing over."

"We're not going anywhere," Sanji assured him, Ussop relaying this message as he pulled on his seatbelt. "None of us has seen this fabled bright white light that everyone else does."

Luffy look back at Ussop with a troubled frown after Ussop relayed this to the others. He saw the way Ussop was sitting, his hands tucked between his knees and his shoulders scrunched.

"Why are you sitting like that?" he asked curiously.

"The other guys are taking up all the room, I can _feel_ it," Ussop muttered, hoping he wasn't accidentally touching any of them.

"They're sitting like _people_?" Luffy asked with a laugh, recorder still out. As Franky pulled out from his parking spot, he said, "So, guys, tell me – how'd you guys die?"

"This kid is very rude," Zoro muttered bitterly.

"Might as well as ask me how long I am," Sanji said with a frown.

"Sex with a beautiful lady!" Brook called out joyfully.

"None of them answered," Ussop said firmly, shivering. "I don't want to know how they did, they just did."

As Franky pulled up to the stop sign, Sanji craning his neck to look down the visible sidewalks, Zoro suddenly perked. He pointed ahead of them, shouting out, " _There he is_!"

"STOP!" Ussop cried out, Franky hitting the brakes, Luffy falling back against the dash with a bewildered noise. The recorder fell out of his hand as Sanji opened his door and fell out with Zoro clambering over him, Brook catching himself hastily.

" _Did that door just open on its own_?" Franky exclaimed, seeing the back passenger door slowly swing back into place. A car horn behind him blasted, and he impatiently waved them by as Ussop unbuckled himself quickly, reaching over the bench seat to shut the door.

"They ran out all of a sudden," he reported with a bewildered tone. "The foreigner said something, and they – that's when the door opened."

"We better learn his language, then," Luffy said, rummaging on the floor for his recorder. "Because I bet the things he says is _real_ important. What if he were a dictator ghost with minions? Like, they're bad guys from the past trying to run from the cops, or something?"

"That is a nice imagination," Franky told him as he put on his flashers and wore a confused look. "So - ! What…what are…we just…"

"We're back!" Brook announced, climbing back into the truck.

"They're back," Ussop said, looking over at the door, waiting for it to open again.

"Hi!" he heard a boy say cheerfully. "Hi, I'm here!"

"They found him!" Ussop reported with a surprised expression. "There's a boy."

"Are we still going to the hospital?" Franky asked as he pulled forward, Luffy holding out the recorder.

"NO HOSPITAL!" the boy yowled. "I don't want to go back there! _I don't want to_! I found my own way out, I don't want to go back!"

"Why not?" Sanji asked him, automatically reaching for his seatbelt. Ussop saw it jiggle out of the corner of his eye. "Sorry! Habit!"

The boy sat on Zoro's lap, making a face as Brook squished up against Zoro to give Ussop room. The three ghosts were once again tightly clustered against each other, Sanji holding onto the door's armrest, sure he was going to be pushed out.

" _Home_?" Ussop asked Franky with hesitation.

"I swear, I will run away again if you try to take me back," the boy threatened the ghostly trio.

"I hope I don't frighten you," Brook said gently. "I'm just a ghostly skeleton just wanting to make friends."

The boy reached out to touch Brook's face with examination, then sat back with a firm nod. "You're not that scary, I've seen _way_ worse."

"You've seen 'worse' than me?" Brook cried out with fright.

"Yeah. The hospital had a lot of creepy things, but you look a lot nicer. I'm not going back there, though," the boy said with determination.

"Why not?" Zoro demanded over the sound of Ussop's voice relaying the conversation to the others.

The boy licked his dry, cracked lips before he said in a small voice, "Because of the big spider."

Sanji froze with horror as Ussop did. Luffy noticed his friend's reaction, holding the recorder out to the backseat as Franky strained to hear what was happening.

"It's not a doctor," the boy continued with a wince. "I've seen those. This is…different. It followed me outside. It knows I was waiting for you guys. It might be following us, now."

" _Stop the car_ ," Ussop demanded of Franky. His features filled with panic as Franky looked frazzled, unable to pull over safely. "Stop the damn car and you guys _get out_!"

"What- ? _Why_?" Luffy and Zoro whined at the same time.

"Because there is some sort of spider chasing after this boy, and I'm not doing that again!" Ussop howled, slapping the seat.

"Is that what he's saying?" Luffy asked. Together, he and Sanji demanded, " _What spider_?"

The boy looked puzzled at the ghost hunters' presence, Sanji forcing him to return his attention to them.

" _What spider_?" he repeated.

"It's a big one, with human heads on its legs and a big scary body," the boy said timidly. "And it crawls real fast and laughs and it even bothers the living because I seen him do it."

" _GET OUT_!" Ussop demanded as he opened his door suddenly, Luffy and Franky crying out with alarm as the truck was still in motion. Over their frantic shouts, he yelled, " _All_ of you guys, get out! This has gone too far! You guys better tuck and roll, because we're not stopping!"

" _I don't wanna_!" the boy cried as Brook gasped in outrage. "I'm going to die if we do that!"

"We're already dead," Zoro reminded him patiently.

"…Oh yeah…"

"Ussop, close the door!" Franky shouted.

"What are they saying?" Luffy demanded, giving up on the recorder as his friend's face spoke volumes. Ussop managed to close the door as the truck finally pulled up to a stop light. So he opened it again, waving at the four to get out.

"Either here or there it doesn't matter!" Ussop snapped at the ghosts. "But that thing you're describing, kid, sounds considerably _terrifying_ and if _I_ can hear you guys just fine, I _do not_ want to hear _that_ thing! This is _your_ problem, go fix it on your own!"

"Then take us to the hospital," Sanji demanded, snatching the boy in his arms and holding onto him tightly as he struggled. "Take us there to the front, and we'll find our own way."

"I DON'T WANNA GO! I DON'T! HELP ME, ZORO!"

Luffy lunged over his seat to pull Ussop's door shut, reaching for the door. He and Ussop struggled against each other with the door, Franky yelling at both of them while Zoro crinkled his brow to look at the boy. He held his face between his hands to get his attention, asking gently, "How do you know my name? I did not give it to you."

The boy looked guilty, pursing his lips. Overhearing this, Sanji leaned in.

"You know your name, don't you?" he asked the boy with an accusing tone.

Above the shouts of the living, Brook leaned over to hear the boy's answer. He heaved a sigh, giving a scowling nod.

"It's Tony. My name is Tony," he muttered. "I knew my name before I met you guys. And I know yours, too, because the spider told me. He knows _everyone's_ name. That's Ussop, that's Luffy, that's Franky – that's Brook and you're Sanji."

Ussop froze once he heard this. " _He knows my name_ …this ghost kid knows my name…! The kid knows all of our names!"

"This spider," Sanji said, palm horizontal in a gesture, " _how_? _What_? Answer quickly."

"He was trying to eat me," Tony muttered. "He talks funny. He lives in the hospital on the bottom floor. He grabs the ones that try to go outside and eats them, and then he gets bigger. He followed me outside. He keeps telling me to 'give it back', but I don't know what he wants, and I don't have _anything_ of his."

Sanji looked moments from fainting, thinking about how they'd barged right into the building without much fear.

Zoro scrunched his brow with thoughtful action. "Well…maybe he just wants you to go where you're supposed to. Look, we'll get out here," he then said, finger to his lips to those that were looking at him. The boy opened his mouth to protest but Zoro clamped a hand over his mouth with his other hand as Zoro said loudly, "We'll get out here and leave these guys out of it. So, let's go."

"No one understands you, moron – " Sanji started to say snidely when he realized Zoro's ultimate goal. He said loudly, for Ussop's benefit, "Oh, _okay_ , Zoro, we shall _get out here_ and _go_. Yes. Excellent idea. We're _leaving_ the living guys _alone_ …"

After giving Sanji a furious look for such obvious fakery, Zoro kept a finger against his mouth to indicate for Tony to remain silent while Brook covered his own mouth with both hands.

Listening hard for several seconds, Ussop relaxed with a heavy breath. "They're gone. The foreigner said something, they're gone. Whatever it was, the others listened. But they're gone, _they're all gone_."

"What were they talking about?" Luffy asked, fiddling with his recorder to rewind it. "Some kinda spider?"

"The boy, Tony, said that a spider had chased him from the hospital and knew everyone's name. Even ours, and he – pointed and named us off, from what it sounds it. He also said it was scary," Ussop added with a shudder.

"Man," Franky whistled, pulling forward with the rest of the traffic as the light turned. "That was _intense_. They're really on a mission, aren't they? This isn't common of what we usually catch."

"For them to make this type of fuss…!" Ussop trailed off, thinking back to the things that they'd said. But because of his own shouts with Luffy and Franky, he wasn't able to catch all of it. He knew there were monsters out there, they'd encountered their share of malevolent spirits and potential demons, but to know that _ghosts_ feared those things as well…it caused his heart to palpitate with fear.

He wiped his sweaty face with one trembling hand, leaning back in his seat. "God, I'm exhausted. It sucks being able to hear this type of thing."

"Good job, Ussop!" Luffy said, replaying the recorder. "You did good, today! You were able to help someone, and that's what counts!"

"Did I?" Ussop asked skeptically. "Because it mostly feels like we tripped into something that never should've had our hands in the first place."

"Well, ghosts can't help it," Franky said. "If they remain behind, they've got unfinished business to attend to. It's still a case."

"Right, but I wash my hands of it now," Ussop said. "Because this wasn't a normal type of haunting. These guys were…different. No involvement with each other, yet coming to me with all this talk about ghouls, monitors and spiders? Uh-uh. _Done_."

Luffy was disappointed. He didn't capture anything of the events that had just happened, not even a whisper. He re-listened to their shouts of activity earlier. At one point he thought he heard far off chuckling, but he wasn't sure.


	6. Chapter 6

**Heilewelt: this is definitely a redo – I cleaned it up, shortened some things, added some things; worked on it enough to post a chapter (or two) a week after this. Chapter Seven will be up later! Thank you for remembering it!**

 **Rainbow D. Jay: Thank you!**

 **Part Six:**

 **Caution: There Are Unruly Souls**

* * *

The quartet silently followed the trio of ghost hunters as they spoke excitedly about their earlier captures. Sanji fell back a few steps when he remembered a detail.

"We can't get in," he reminded Brook low.

Brook shrugged his shoulders. "There's another way around it."

As the trio entered their apartment, Brook signaled for the others to follow him. They swept through the apartment next door. They passed through various rooms until Brook stopped at the very back of the bedroom, facing the wall. Hands on his hips, he surveyed the surface until he reached out to the top left corner, tapping on it.

"Why is he so _tall_?" Tony whispered to Zoro curiously.

"Probably because he told many lies," Zoro said with caution. "Instead of remaining a human, he turned into something freakish and disliked. You should consider what could still happen to you if you aren't telling the truth."

Tony frowned at him with consideration while Sanji rolled his eyes mightily from out of Tony's sight.

"Here's one," Brook said, rapping on the spot. He thrust an arm out, noticeably hitting a barrier. He slapped the spot a few times, his arm sinking further and further in until he was braced against his shoulder. "Those scrolls are posted by stickies from the back, so they're rather easy to remove from the wall when pushed upon at a certain point."

Sanji nodded, but looked at him thoughtfully. "How were you able to arrive here if it isn't part of your routine?"

"The occupant that lives here requested for their assistance in drilling these holes into the wall for her curtains," Brook answered cheerfully. He poked his head in to check out his work, then repeated his actions earlier. In minutes he crossed into the room, then waved them in. Ussop's room was a cluttered mess – there were books, posters and equipment lying around various surfaces. Atop of a desk that looked as if it had been picked up from the street, an elaborate computer set-up was visible, surrounded by battered journals and piles of photographs. Brook had removed the scrolls and tossed them onto a pile of discarded clothes on the floor.

There was mirrors visible on nearly every free area that wasn't covered with a poster –the discomforting feeling of being held in place made the ghosts retreat back against the wall. The reflective surfaces shone brilliantly like spotlights, causing more than one arm to shield their eyes.

"That hurts," Sanji said, surprised. "How is that happening?"

"Mirrors are a pain," Brook agreed. "We can't actually see ourselves in reflective surfaces. Not that any ghost has any reason to look at themselves in the afterlife. I can remove a few but not all to be noticed."

"We just need some time here to figure out what this guy wants," Zoro said, crouching so that the reflections wouldn't bother him. Tony sat next to him, hugging his knees. "Now, Tony, start from the beginning."

Sanji clasped his hands to his face as he sat down, Brook following suit but having a difficult time remaining underneath the lowest hanging mirror. "You're so gentle and kind, Chia Pet! You relate to children so easily! Were you not in the same grade?"

Zoro reached over Tony's head to shove him. "Shut your piehole, Culture Club."

Tony snickered at their snarls, then began to fiddle with the end of his gown. "Well, I was sick you see? But I didn't know I _died_. I just thought they were moving me to another room. When I sat up to look around, there was a man already pushing me onto an elevator. We went downstairs and he pushed me into a room full of lockers. He left me there and I couldn't say anything because I had never been there before. I was a little scared."

Brook winced at the thought of a child waking up in a morgue.

"So I got up to go ask a nurse why I was in there, but I didn't know where I was. It was like a basement, or something. I was there all by myself. It was _very_ quiet," Tony added. "I didn't see the elevator, but it was a long hall with all these doors to it. So I turned to the left because one of my doctors said to always turn left if I ever got lost upstairs. It took me awhile until I found some stairs, and when I came out, it was really dark and foggy. I thought the hospital was on fire!"

"That must've been very scary," Zoro said. "When we were there, it was pretty dark with nowhere to go. You were very brave to continue looking."

Tony nodded. "It was also very quiet. No one heard me when I called out, and I could see, like, shadows of people? But they couldn't see me. This is when I grew so scared that I didn't care to look around too closely because I _wanted_ someone to hear me. And someone did – that spider."

Sanji and Brook shuddered, clutching themselves.

"He came out from the shadows, saying my name. That's how I knew it," Tony then said defensively. "He had an ugly voice. He told me I was in his home and he didn't want me there. I turned to go back the way I came but I couldn't find the door. I ran around like a chicken with its head cut off, saw one and went through it, and he came after me. All those heads were screaming at me to run away, and I did. Those people in front of the hospital were in the way, and when the spider ran into them, he started eating them! But there was so many – I got out of there and remembered that my grandfather's home was by the store, and that's where I found you guys. After you left, the spider was calling for me from somewhere. He said your names, and said he wanted to eat you, too. But he kept telling me to 'bring it back', and I don't know what he was talking about."

At his puzzled tone, Zoro examined him. Tony was wearing a brightly printed hospital gown with a cartoon bear on them, so he wasn't sure what the boy could be hiding in it that seemed relevant to the spider's demands. His wrists and the inside of his elbows were bruised, and he lacked the ID band that Law had asked about. Everything about him was frighteningly bone thin and wilted, as if his body had atrophied to nearly nothing. While Zoro wondered what Tony's cause of death was, he wasn't going to ask – he thought it would be upsetting.

"Did you find anything while you were looking for the stairs from the basement?" Sanji then asked curiously. "Maybe you took something you weren't supposed to…?"

Tony shook his head. "No. Maybe he means my life? Because…I'm dead?"

The three ghosts shrugged. All of them quieted as Ussop entered his room with a heavy sigh. He shut the door and crossed space to his bed. Heaving himself down on it, he settled himself into a comfortable position. The ghostly quartet remained quiet for some time as he fell asleep.

Once Sanji was content with the volume of his snores, he whispered, "So, _now_ what?"

"I don't want to see the spider," Brook whispered back, shivering.

"Who are these guys?" Tony asked curiously at normal volume, the three shushing him immediately.

Making sure that Ussop was still asleep, Zoro then explained, "They're ghost hunters. This one can hear us when we talk to him."

Tony gave him a look of awe. " _Sweet_!"

"I know, right?"

"I have a lot of things I need to say," Tony said, clambering to his feet to approach the bed. Brook grabbed him and pulled him back.

"Not yet," Brook said. "Not until we're sure of what we're going to do. He has the power to kick us out of his room. And if a monitor catches us, we'll be kicked out of the apartment and have to start all over again."

"What's a 'monitor'?"

While Zoro patiently told him, Sanji leaned over to speak to Brook. "But Ussop acknowledged us earlier," Sanji said.

"We have to be invited _every_ time," Brook told him.

"We had no problem at the grocery store."

"Because he was continuously interacting with us, there wasn't a need for invitation. He also invited us to interact with the others, so all it takes is one invitation!"

"We're like vampires," Sanji whispered, eyes wide with astonishment. "Like 'the Lost Boys'!"

"I saw those things," Tony then whispered to the others after gaining information from Zoro. "The spider ate them. They squealed – like baby animals."

The three looked uncomfortable.

"So…what are we doing?" Zoro asked.

"Tony, it's important that you complete your task," Sanji told the boy. "Because you died at the hospital, you have a way into the light – "

"I don't want to go," Tony interrupted him firmly. "I'm not ready to. There's stuff I want to do. I've been sick for a long time, now that I'm somewhat better, I want to _do_ things!"

"Trust me kid, it isn't worth it to stay," Brook said gently. "I've been around for centuries now, and there's a strong limit to what you can do in the afterlife. This is the most excitement I've had in a very long time."

Zoro and Sanji looked at Brook with some muted horror, then looked at each other. Their expressions turned worried, something they hid when Tony looked at them.

" _Why_?" Tony demanded. "When you're a ghost, you can do a lot of stuff!"

"Not a lot of it," Sanji said. "We can't go outside of places we'd visited the day of our deaths unless we're with someone that's already been out there. So it isn't as if we can wander all around the city on free will like we would when we were living."

Zoro looked at him with a puzzled expression. "Then you didn't die on impact if we were able to make our way from the grocery store to the hospital."

"I already _told_ you I was _body_ dead, but not _brain_ dead. Pay attention!"

"Ugh, sometimes I filter your annoying voice out so I can save what's left of my brain."

"There isn't much left of it," Sanji agreed, causing Zoro to hit him with frustration.

Tony frowned. "But all the movies I watched when grandpa was gone, they showed ghosts doing all sorts of stuff. So now that I'm a ghost, I want to do that sort of thing."

"Listen, we were told that if you are able to go into the light, you are reborn to live again," Zoro said. "The sooner we can return you, the faster you can be reborn."

"Isn't that something?" Brook said with a sigh. "What about the rest of us?"

"Prove it!" Tony challenged him.

"We watched the doctor push souls into doors," Sanji said. "Those doors will take you where you need to go, and since you're guaranteed a push, you get a redo!"

Tony sighed noisily, causing the others to shush him as Ussop stirred. "But I want to _haunt_ people!" he complained, Ussop lifting his head as Zoro clapped a hand over his mouth. The man looked around suspiciously as he wiped drool from his mouth. He sat up, looking around his room for the source of the mysterious sound that had caught his attention and relaxed his shoulders. Reaching up to scratch his head, Ussop didn't see anything out of place but he wasn't looking in the right areas. He rose up from his bed and left the room, the four breathing out easy.

Brook look at the others. "I'm sure it won't be too much trouble if we give him a chance – ?"

"NO," Sanji denied, arms in an 'x'. "Have we forgotten about that damned spider?"

Tony groaned.

"While I've seen my share of things, this sounds like something I have no experience with," Brook warned. "These guys have taken me to places haunted by monsters in their own standing, but every one of them is different! This spider thing – while we shouldn't necessarily _fear_ death, the fact that it is capable of something _worse_ than that makes me very reluctant to allow you two to let Tony have fun!"

" _You_ were the one that was going to let him!" Sanji snapped at him.

Brook chuckled while Tony looked at Sanji with a frown. The blond said, "We're taking you back to the hospital and that's it. We'll get around this spider somehow. If he's around here looking for you, we can have those guys drive us to the parking garage. It won't be that hard to find the doc and he'll sort the problem out!"

"I _hate_ doctors! They let me die!"

"This is a good plan," Zoro said with a nod. "We need to ask them to drive us there, then. There is nothing we can do with that thing crawling around here, since all of you are ninnies."

"Chia Pet, if I want your opinion, I'll ask someone else for it!"

"But I'm not ready to go," Tony muttered. "I haven't been able to say goodbye to my grandpa…"

"Perhaps your grandpa is waiting for you," Brook said gently. "It's been some time since your passing."

"It felt like I _just_ died! I wasn't here for very long!"

"But if you didn't know Britney had married, it's been quite some time since then," Zoro said, gesturing at Brook.

"She was very popular in the nineties," Brook said, "and didn't marry until the earlier part of this century. Since then, she's divorced with kids and is onto boyfriend number five right now! She's performing in Vegas regularly!"

Tony went still, processing this information while Sanji frowned, Zoro lost in thought.

"Are you sure you died in the nineties?" Sanji asked him. "Or were you stuck there as a personal problem?"

Zoro reached down and yanked Sanji's twin Velcro straps from his shoes, causing the blonde to gasp with outrage. " _Ugh_ , eat me!"

"But it doesn't seem like I was in there looking for a way out for _that_ long," Tony said faintly.

"Time flies on without us," Brook answered him. "If we don't have our names and don't remember who we are, it's difficult to even conceive of it in the first place. But you have your name, little one, so you are aware of these difficulties – unfortunately, it wasn't what you'd dreamed, isn't it?"

"Not so far," Tony said with disgust. "I just want to scare people, now. I want to see my grandpa, I want to have _fun_! I was in the hospital for a long time, I rarely got to go outside and do things!"

"Honestly, we wouldn't mind participating because it does sound like fun scaring people," Sanji said. "But with that thing chasing you, it's best to move on before it can catch you."

"You're so bossy, I don't want to listen to you anymore," Tony decided, narrowing his eyes. Sanji frowned at him for a few moments, then shifted around to remove his belt.

"That's it, bad kids get a spanking!"

"NO! _NO_! I'M SORRY!"

"Hold him Zoro! This'll teach him to talk back to his elders!" Sanji threatened, snapping his belt while Tony hid himself behind Zoro.

"Oh no! Cruelty is abound! _Demon_!" Brook shrieked with horror.

"KNOCK IT OFF!" Zoro shouted, holding the two apart. "What the hell is wrong with you? You don't just spank other people's kids!"

"And this is why kids grow up to be so rebellious! Back in my day, we were spanked for speaking back! This is why I'm such a good person now!"

" _Bullshit_!"

"God, you're so _mean_!" Tony shouted at Sanji over Zoro's incredulous denial.

Brook laughed noisily as Zoro kept Sanji's belt from reaching Tony, Tony on his back screaming in terror as he kicked out to block the belt from coming near him. The door opened loudly as Ussop stalked in with a red face, all of them falling silent and still.

" _Shh_ ," Brook hissed.

"I already heard you!" Ussop snapped. "You were supposed to have gone about your business – _how the hell did you get into my room_?"

The four of them remained quiet as he stalked in, looking for the direction the whisper had come from. He was quite positive he'd heard their voices coming from behind his closed door, and his eyes darted about – he saw that his protection spell scrolls had been removed from his wall, laying on a pile of clothes with useless action. With a growl, he stalked over and picked each one up, checking the sturdiness of the sticky on each one.

Just as he was going to reset the one that hung to his right, it was slapped out of his hand. He screamed with surprise and fright.

"Look, we're just looking for a quiet place to sort out our details!" he heard Sanji protest. Ussop squeezed his eyes shut with irritation, fingers curling to his ears. "We can't just have it out in the open where that thing can get us!"

"I don't want it here, either!" Ussop insisted with an aggravated expression.

"But this place is protected, right?" Brook asked. "Only I know how to access it. Be a dear and remove some of the mirrors, okay?"

"NO! Get out of here! You're _not_ invited!" Ussop shouted, stomping on the floor.

Monitors began to drift up from the floor, emerging from the nearby shelves. Zoro picked Tony up as Brook and Sanji hurriedly placed distance between themselves and the silent sentinels. "Let's go before we get kicked out," he said, drifting back through the wall into the other apartment. The other two reluctantly followed.

"Now what?" Sanji asked, replacing his belt.

"It's _your_ fault we got kicked out!"

"It's _this_ one's for not listening!"

"Don't blame it all on me, you ass!"

Brook gently pushed them along, ushering them out the way they'd come. Once outside of the apartment, they stood on the landing with reluctant action, looking for any signs of the creature Tony had described. Setting him atop of his shoulders, Zoro made sure Tony was holding firmly onto him and looked at Brook.

"I guess we do it ourselves, then," he said. "We can give the kid a few thrills on the way there."

"I don't _wannnnnnnnnaaaaaaaaa_!" Tony groaned noisily. "I just died, I wanna be a ghost!"

"We'll let you scare a few people on the way there," Zoro promised him.

"This is so _unfair_!"

"The afterlife is unfair, kid, at least _you_ get a chance to move on," Sanji told him.

"What happens to you guys after I go?" Tony asked curiously as Brook allowed Sanji to lead the way. Seeing the distance between them and the hospital, Sanji began walking in that direction, making his way towards the landscaping that separated them from the complex.

Zoro shrugged. "I guess we hang around until we find out for ourselves where to go."

"That sucks…"

A low, ominous noise began to grow from somewhere behind the shrubs ahead of them. It rumbled with strength, building into a chuckling sound as multiple voices began to cry in terrible pain. Tony wrapped his arms around Zoro's head with a gasp. Sanji froze, unsure why his arms were tingling. He lifted one to see that his hairs were standing straight up. The bushes rattled a little, Tony jerking on Zoro's head to get him moving.

"It's that thing!" he wailed. "It found me!"

: :

Ussop fell asleep easier after reposting all his protection scrolls back up. He didn't feel bad for sending them away. Luffy and Franky had showed Sabo the findings of their brief visit with them at the grocery store earlier, and Ussop had gotten tired of their excitement over the very meager recordings of the ghosts' voices. It was not even a sliver of the things he'd heard – their constant voices and activity wore him out.

He only woke up because "It's Britney, bitch!" sounded out seconds before his computer speakers blasted out one of her singles.

It jolted his heart, nearly ended his breathing as her music ramped up to full volume into his room. He uttered a short shriek of surprise as he shot up in bed. Scrambling to turn it off, he tripped over his blankets and shoes, climbing to his desk with rapid presses of his mouse.

When the mute button made it possible for him to sort out his thoughts, he caught his breath and looked around himself. He fumbled for the light nearby, hearing Franky pounding on his wall with a cranky yell to turn his porn off.

His protection scrolls were down again. As well as several mirrors placed gently in a row against his bed. His skin crawled, but his familiarity with the group made him brave.

" _What the hell_? I told you to _go away_!"

The mouse sounded out and Britney continued singing. He jerked around and shut the computer off, the tower giving a heaving groan as it did so.

" _Aw_ ," he heard the boy mumble with dejection.

"Are you kidding me right now?" Ussop asked, slapping his desk.

"But I wanna hear her new video!"

"NO! Go away, kid!"

"We're hiding," he heard Brook say, his voice trembling slightly. "We have nowhere else to go. That _thing_ is outside."

Ussop danced in place, goosebumps breaking out over his arms. "Then take it _away_ from here!"

"But it's going to eat us!" Brook and Tony cried.

"So bringing it here was your _best_ idea?" Ussop exclaimed with distress, hands to his head.

"It didn't see us run in here," he heard Sanji say petulantly from near his bed. "I'm trying to get Chia Pet here to run out there and distract it, but he said his jeans won't let him."

Ussop heard the foreigner yell out a response that had the boy laughing. He slammed a fist down on his desk as Franky knocked and peeked in at him. "Everything okay, bro?" he was asked.

"They're back! They're _hiding_ ," Ussop answered with gritted teeth. "And one of them is obsessed with Britney Spears!"

Franky sputtered out a laugh with disbelief. "Ha ha! That's awesome!"

" _No it's not_! Let me borrow your truck, I'll drive them to the hospital myself!"

"I can do it," Franky offered with a loud yawn. "Let's go together. It shouldn't be that big of a deal."

Ussop searched for his shoes, grumbling as Franky turned away to go get dressed. "This is ridiculous…Brook! Go with them if they find a solution to their problem so you can move on!"

" _Aw_ ," Brook groaned.

"We actually didn't see it," Ussop heard Sanji say close to him, causing him to jerk his arm around to discourage the ghost from coming anywhere near him, "Stop hitting me!"

"If this thing gets me and I die, I'm coming after all of you," Ussop threatened without any weight, not wanting to imagine himself dying at the hands of some ghostly spider.

"Oh, good! Another friend! Just remember to take careful notes of the paths you take because those are probably going to be the last ones you do," he was warned.

"I don't want to!" Ussop cried impatiently, shoving his feet into his shoes. He heard Franky moving about with his keys, and slammed the door behind him. Moving through the main corridor of their apartment, he grumbled as Franky opened the door to Luffy's room, then Sabo's to let them know where they were going. They immediately scrambled out of bed, excited at the newest change.

As Ussop ventured into the kitchen to find something to drink, he saw Franky pulling down the scrolls in the entry way. He sputtered, abandoning his task to prevent that.

"Why?" Franky asked. "They have to come through here in order to get out, right?"

"No! No! The reason they were hiding out in _my_ room was because that thing can't come in there after them!" Ussop said, hurriedly putting them back up. "And if they're afraid of it, then _I'm_ afraid of it!"

"Ussop, this is not a bad thing," Luffy said sleepily, barely awake as he shuffled into his shorts, Sabo nearly running into him as he emerged from his room with a camera. "We want activity. If it happens here, that's great because we can get it with what we have right now."

"I don't want anything happening here! You guys can't hear what I can! What's worse is not seeing it, but then again, that's a good thing because I know I'll never sleep again if I see these scary ghostly faces looking at me!"

"Shh, you're driving yourself into a panicked fit," Sabo told him, finger against Ussop's lips. Ussop slapped his hand away. "This will be awesome if we can get something on camera! Luffy's recorder barely picked up anything! If they're here, we can – "

"Sabo, your research?" Franky asked, Sabo lighting up as he pulled his phone from his pocket.

After making some swipes, he called out, "Sanji Blackleg, are you here?"

Ussop listened, hearing nothing moving from his room or from the whole apartment.

"He was twenty when he was hit by a car," Sabo reported, looking at his phone. "It was a hit and run, never solved. It had taken awhile for his family to identify him, as he'd run away from home when he was a little younger. As for this Tony child, I wasn't able to complete my investigation. It's too long of a stretch. We'd need his last name as well."

"I don't think it matters now," Ussop said, waving that away. "Because we're returning him to the hospital and that's _that_."

"I'm here!" Ussop then heard from his room. "I heard my name! My _full_ name!"

"Sanji's here," he said reluctantly.

Franky pulled down the scrolls once more as Luffy hastily pulled up his recorder. Ussop tried to wrestle the scrolls from Franky to put them back up but Franky overpowered him and held the scrolls out of his reach.

"Come out and talk to us, Sanji," Sabo then said, focusing the camera towards the hall. "Franky took down the scrolls."

"I don't want to go, yet!" Ussop heard Tony whine, so he quit his struggle with a heavy sigh. "They're making me go. I want to haunt people!"

"No, that's a bad idea!" Ussop scolded that direction. "Haunting people isn't a good thing!"

"My ultra violet caught two forms!" Sabo squealed cheerily. " _Two_ of them!"

"I haven't heard my full name in so long!" Sanji exclaimed.

"That's great, keep it to yourself," Ussop said crankily. "We don't need to know more about you."

" _Rude_. Listen, Zoro's full name is Roronoa Zoro. Find out more about him! Then maybe you guys can fly him back to Japan and leave his leash there for someone else to find!"

" _Japan_ ," Ussop repeated, indicating for Franky to write something down. He gave Zoro's full name. "He's Japanese."

He heard Zoro say something to Sanji that made him attempt to repeat those words, fumbling over them as Franky concentrated on the task.

"'I'll kill you'," he repeated dumbly, Ussop paling significantly. Franky looked terrified as well, Sabo and Luffy noticing their hesitation to further assist. Brook's laughter rang out.

"He's saying that to Sanji, not you guys," the skeleton assured them. "Well, then! Shall we get a move on? I'm a little apprehensive myself."

"They want to go, so let's go," Ussop muttered, pointing at the door.

"Well, _wait_! Let's talk to them a little more," Sabo said, lowering his camera. "They sound very comprehensive and are answering your questions intelligently – perhaps they can answer a few of our own?"

Hands in prayer form, Ussop said, "Please understand the situation, here, Sabo. We are talking about _ghosts_ being terrified of something bigger than them. They are talking about a spider that can bother humans, too. We are trying to return them to the hospital where their souls can settle without that spider harming any of them or me."

"Ussop, we've run into demonic entities before," Luffy said with a chuckle. "All that happened were scratches and some threats! I'm sure this wouldn't be that big of a problem, either."

"But that was so _scary_ in itself!" Brook suddenly cried, causing Ussop to cringe. "Because those things were really terrible things! _I_ still have nightmares about them!"

"Sanji, if you're still here, answer me this," Sabo said, adjusting his camera to hold up onto his shoulder, panning around the living room in hopes of capturing movement from the group, "aside from the ones you're with, can you interact with other ghosts?"

"Not really," Sanji answered, off to Ussop's left. "Why?"

"He wants to know 'why'," Ussop relayed wearily, reaching up to reassemble his hair into something manageable.

"We don't even recognize other ghosts," Sanji then answered, too close to Ussop's liking. "Our entire situation here was absolutely coincidental. I ran into mosshead here, we ran into the kid, then the doc, then Brook – this was a whole series of unfortunate events that happened to just work."

"I was cursed into a living Hell," Zoro muttered, scratching his nose as Ussop reluctantly relayed what Sanji was saying to the others. "I did something terrible to listen to his stupid voice for the rest of my ghost life."

"This doc is important," Brook whispered to Ussop, leaning over him. "The doc knows how to get to the light – "

"He's an angel," Zoro insisted.

"He's a _devil_ ," Sanji insisted over him.

"Then we get to this doc to get _all_ you guys out of my damned hair!" Ussop snapped.

"Ughnnnn I don't want to!" Tony whined piteously.

"Pretty sure I am not meant for Hell," Brook muttered. "I will fight him if he keeps trying to put me down there."

Sabo lowered the camera, looking at Luffy. Luffy frowned back at him. "If we give you a name, do you think you could find someone for us?" Sabo asked tentatively.

Ussop made frantic fretting motions, waving his arms about. " _NO_! Sabo!"

"This is something important to us, Ussop," Sabo protested.

"I can do it!" Sanji offered, much to the dismay of the others. Only Tony called out with cheer, thinking his hospital visit would be delayed.

"He said he can't," Ussop said snappily. "He _can't_ , Sabo, they have to go to the hospital!"

Sabo sighed, Luffy frowning at Ussop. "It's just…if we know he moved on, I think we'd feel a lot better – "

"I know you feel that way, I _understand_ ," Ussop told him urgently as Sanji continued speaking, trying to interrupt with another offer. "I _get_ it, but…if I haven't heard from him, then he can't still be here, Sabo."

Sabo gave a reluctant frown while Luffy rewound his recorder wearing a similar expression. He shoved earbuds in while Ussop felt bad for denying the request.

When Luffy listened to the recorder, Ussop said, "Let's drop them off at the hospital. Let's at least help these guys move on, and maybe they can take Brook with them. There are plenty of others out there that we might be able to help if this is successful."

Luffy then held out the recorder with an accusatory frown, Sanji's recorded shouts coming out as, 'Don't lie! _I_ can! Some of us can't go into the light! I, Sanji, can do this as a man of my word!'

Zoro's voice in the background had Franky hurriedly trying to translate. Scowling, Ussop frowned out at the darkness of the living room while Sabo frowned at him, trying to understand his position but unable to fully do so.

"The other guy's either saying 'Drop the jelly' or 'stop helping the small animals'," Franky said slowly. "I might've not written it in right."

Sabo brightened. "Change the program to a verbal translator!"

"Ooh! Right!"

While they did that, Ussop sighed heavily. "You're a rotten friend and no one likes you," he heard Sanji say close to his ear. "In my day, if someone needed help, you'd help them as a real friend. You're going to wind up alone at your own damn funeral! I'll even come back to laugh at you! You think I'm mean now – wait until you die, you little shit!"

Not wanting to argue with a ghost, Ussop threw up his hands in exasperation. He said to his friends, "Look, they made it clear they want Tony at the hospital. After that…after _that_ , we can see what happens, alright? They offered!"

"It's not that we want to push you or anything, Ussop, it's just…" Luffy trailed off awkwardly, handing Sabo the translator as he and Franky sought to translate Zoro's words. "It'd be really great to know that Ace is truly gone. Hearing from him from time to time, maybe he's lost like these guys. If there's a way to allow him to pass over, maybe we should at least give it a try."

Ussop gave a reluctant nod.

He suddenly grew aware that the ghosts had fallen uncomfortably silent. He grew vaguely aware to a low pounding noise, something he immediately attuned himself to as he tried to sort out its location. Luffy was talking to him, Sabo and Franky still struggling to understand the translating process from both the recorder and the phone; none of them aware of the pounding noise.

Ussop's arms started to shake, limbs feeling like jelly as a cold sensation passed over him. He shivered. Lifting an arm, he realized that his hairs were standing straight up. A sense of wrongness began to permeate the air, and he heard Tony whining softly with fear heavy in his tone.

"What is that?" he heard Sanji ask, his voice dropped low.

To Ussop it seemed like they were footsteps – too many of them at a time. They grew in force, muffled voices growing apparent as they rang out from the stairway outside their door. Trembling slightly, knowing that this wrongness was attributed to the growing clamor outside, Ussop turned his head to look in that direction. It seemed like someone was shaking the entire building with its approach. The stairs rattled slightly, the sound audible enough to have Luffy looking in that direction. But Luffy looked away because it was a normal sound – the sound of someone walking up the stairs.

Ussop was terrified. The pounding grew louder, voices crying out with terror or begging in different languages – he couldn't sort them out to listen to each one individually. He heard Tony cry out, voice suddenly muffled as someone comforted him.

Ussop turned to look at their front door, hearing the doorknob jiggle ever so slightly. The sound of fingernails against wood tapped out softly in various areas of the doorway, causing Ussop to involuntarily think of multiple limbs. With how close Franky and Sabo were to the door, they looked over in mid-word.

Sabo looked at his watch with a confused, "Who is that? It's two a.m."

Ussop could hear anxious cries building in volume, but one sound carried over that. A low, building chuckle that grew with strength – not quite a man, but holding the quality of one.

"KnOcK, kNoCk," it said. It _felt_ inhuman and wicked, bringing Ussop thoughts of a demon.

The door knob jiggled again, Franky giving Sabo his recorder as Sabo stepped back to give him room to answer. All of them were focused on the door with puzzled expressions. But Ussop knew that if they opened it, they were inviting it in.

"Don't open it!" Brook cried out with fear. The prompt command of the foreigner shocked some order into the quartet.

"Hope you survive," Ussop heard Sanji hiss near his ear. "We're out of here!"

"KnOcK, kNoCk, i SaId," the thing purred. The entire wall shuddered under unseen force. The scraping sounds scratching against the intensified. "I wAnT iT bAck, yOU LiTTle shIT. giVE iT bAck… _GIVE IT BACK_!"

The entire wall and door rattled with frighteningly heavy force, causing the hinges to creak and all the men inside to scream with startled terror.


	7. Chapter 7

**Part Seven:**

 **Proceed With Urgent Caution**

* * *

Franky pulled the door open, teeth chattering slightly with apprehension. For some reason, the security lights of the landing flickered ominously, the stillness and silence of the outside thick; it figured it was only because it was two in the morning. Standing outside the doorway was a man taller than him, his grin white in the dim darkness of the landing. He seemed to be bathed in shadow, Franky squinting at him to make out the edges of a snappy suit, possibly blond hair. He glanced up at their porchlight to see it sizzle before popping noisily.

"Hello," the man in shadow said, Ussop staring with wide-eyed shock. This voice was the very same voice he'd heard just moments earlier, but it was also different. _Human_. This man standing before them wasn't some fearsome monster that scared ghosts wordless; he was in a dashing three piece suit, hair gelled back and jewelry at his earlobes. He looked like he'd just left some high priced club. Unusual for their side of the city. "It appears I was given the wrong address."

Franky stared at him with wide-eyed fear, unsure of what to think. The man didn't seem apologetic, but he didn't look like a threat, either. In his opinion, dude was only there as the result of a mistake.

"S-she gave you the wrong number…bro?" he asked tentatively. "I know how that scene goes."

After mulling it over for short, terse moments, the man then nodded. "Yes. It…appears that way. I'll be on my way."

He turned and walked back towards the stairway, Franky watching after him with doubt. He closed the door lightly behind him, pulling the locks into place. The moment his hands fell away, Ussop heard those awful noises resume. The screaming and crying noises faded in volume, the shuddering force of power fading with each step on the stairway. He gripped his shirt with sweaty hands, unsure of what just happened. He turned around, half expecting to see the quartet of ghosts.

"Ussop," Sabo stated firmly, "what's wrong?"

"They're not here," Ussop said vaguely. "They left. That man…they were terrified of him. Guys…"

"No problem Ussop!" Luffy cried, removing his earbuds, flinging his recorder about. "Listen to this! This is going to blow you all away!"

: :

At sidewalk facing the hospital, Sanji clasped his knees while struggling for breath. Brook wheezed next to him, back curved as he braced his hands on his own hips. Zoro held Tony under one arm, imagining that sweat was dripping down his face. He couldn't feel it – couldn't feel any part of his missing face – but heavy activity he'd taken while living always earned the action of sweat. He ended up feeling for it anyway – looking at his palm with terrible road rash, he realized he wouldn't be able to feel anything like sweat again.

The horde of festering souls that continuously walked around the hospital caught their attention, and Tony anxiously stared off behind them for signs of the spider. Zoro set him down. Tony ended up clinging to his flannel, using it to hide himself behind while the other two straightened up.

"We found his name, his name is Tony," Sanji muttered to himself, focused on the cross visible to them. "His name is Tony, his name is Tony, he needs to go into the light!"

Tony gave a moan. "I don't want to…!"

Brook felt faint, hand to his forehead. Sanji then looked at the parking tower nearby, pointing at it. "Let's go there."

"Why are we even listening to him?" Tony complained, following along anyway. Zoro wiped his hand on his flannel, trying to focus on the present. "He's not the boss of us! Why are we always doing what he wants to do?"

"I alone am responsible for all of you, because if it wasn't for me, none of us would be in this spot right now," Sanji snapped, grabbing his hand once he deemed Zoro walking too slow. With cautious looks behind them, he stalked their way towards the parking garage, completely bypassing the moving horde. "We'd all be stuck in our routines! Now that we're cognizant – we're going to be fine. The doc will help us – once he gets you moving, we can then find his name."

Tony sighed noisily, head lolling back and forth as he allowed Sanji to tug on him. "I _guess_ …!"

"Why would he ask that of you?" Sanji then asked Tony, Brook floating alongside them. The fact that his feet didn't touch the ground caused Tony some distraction before he answered Sanji.

"Ask me what?"

"He wants you to give it back. What did you take from him?"

"I told you _, I don't know_!" Tony answered impatiently, Zoro furrowing his brow as something caught his eye. There, tucked in the waistband of his boxers, was a folded slip of paper.

Before he could do anything about it, the ghostly howl of a ghoul cut through the silence.

"I've heard those sounds before," Tony whispered, eyes wide. "Inside the hospital. Are those monsters, too?"

"They're the escaped souls of dead drug addicts," Zoro said, Brook pressing against him with fear. He shoved the skeleton to the side. "They eat anybody for a chance to be alive, again."

Sanji hurried his step, Tony jogging just to keep up. Brook eked out a startled noise, hands to his face with distress while Zoro glanced around, looking for moving shadows. They found their way back into the ER, Zoro and Sanji scanning the area frantically while Tony looked utterly disappointed.

Brook clung to Zoro's back, the ghost unaware that he was even carrying him. "If he sees me, he's going to do away with me!" he whispered frightfully.

"Maternity ward," Sanji decided, dragging Tony behind him as they headed for the stairway. Once there, the four exhaled heavily, feeling more uplifted than before. The weight from their shoulders was gone, their chests light. Brook inhaled deeply then frowned while Tony wore an expression that was moments from tears. Sanji remembered what babies smelled like, inhaling with a refreshed expression. Zoro went cross-eyed from looking at his missing nose with frustration.

"You. Losers. What are you doing here?"

Their heads snapped to the left to seeing Law emerge from a room with a male soul kicking and struggling from his hand. Nurses were running to the room upon frantic shouts, and the soul that Law clung to managed to sit up.

"We found him!" Sanji exclaimed, holding Tony's arm up as Law looked to the boy. He crouched to open the door at his feet, kicking in the struggling man without a glance back. The doctor marched over, hands sliding into his jacket pockets.

Brook shrieked, Law catching sight of him with determination.

" _Run_!" Tony cried, ripping his arm away from Sanji and racing after Brook. Sanji and Zoro whirled around with horror as the pair raced down the busy hallway, shrieking noisily. Sanji looked back at Law with a stunned expression, expecting him to give chase. Law looked at him as he paused nearby, wearing a disgruntled frown.

"You expected me to give chase? Do I _look_ like someone that runs after someone else?"

"That's the kid we were talking to you about," Sanji insisted. "We found him, you can guide him to the light."

"He's not meant for the light," Law stated, giving him a puzzled expression. His stethoscope briefly blinded Sanji once it caught the light from above. He looked over the pair with serious consideration. "We've spoken of this before? Because I don't seem to remember shit."

Sanji gaped at him, then looked at his broken watch. "We were only gone a couple of days - !"

"And I've been here for quite some time, doing my job. You're interrupting it," Law stated with irritation, hands fisted in his pockets. "You're both dead, there's nothing to be done with you. For fuck's sake, man, what's with that color combination?"

Sanji sighed noisily, head hanging back.

Zoro approached cautiously, Law looking at him with disgust.

" _Ew_. What happened to you?"

"You stopped the bleeding," Zoro stated.

Law's eyes dropped to his missing nose. "Can you _smell_?"

"Like cherry blossoms on a windy day," Zoro answered gravely.

Law rubbed his forehead with exasperation. "That's not what I…never mind…"

Sanji interrupted their conversation with a wide wave of his hand. " _Enough_ , you two jerks. We were here before to talk with you about this boy. He left this hospital his own way – but he met this spider monster that lives in the basement that insists the kid's got something of his."

Law looked up with surprise. His left eye twitched. "How do you know about that?"

Sanji gave him an exasperated look. "You _knew_ of this thing?"

Law looked at his blond hair with disdain. "What is going on with your hair? Did you purposely die like that?"

Before Law could allow Sanji an answer, his eyes roved over their heads and focused away from them. Down the hall, Brook and Tony were watching them from around the corner. Various personnel walked through them, uninterrupted. Screams from newborn babies and the alarms coming from the room nearby made it feel like they were briefly alive.

"Why did they run?" he mused. "Am I that frightening? I'm sure I have all my skin intact."

"Because you've tried to end Brook a few times, and that boy came from this location, so he's aware of what you docs do here," Zoro stated.

Law walked past them, heading for a room nearby. Sanji and Zoro followed with exasperation. Zoro spoke with some mild exasperation. "We already went over some things with you. You were the one to talk to us about how to move things, how routines work, how - "

"I don't know why I _don't_ remember that, but that seems highly unlikely," Law said with doubt, flattening a palm against a woman's heaving chest. The woman was in the midst of pushing, her doctor encouraging her while her family waited anxiously nearby. He then reached down to pull on the umbilical cord, catching the baby before he could fall. The body fell into the waiting doctor's hand but the soul of the child remained in Law's hands. Activity increased around them as the baby stretched its arms over his head with a low gurgle, smiling. "I haven't spoken to anyone that could actually hear me, asides from the occasional nurse."

Sanji waited for him to pass the child into waiting arms, then followed after him with determination. "Tony died here in the nineties," he said slowly, as Law checked the charts of a woman breathing deeply, listening to the shrill screams from the room next door. Sanji patted her hand absently, wishing he could console her as Law flipped through the paperwork. "Then he somehow left – you said he couldn't do that. You said he needed to come back here so we can help him into the light."

"I'm the only one that can do that," Law confirmed, resetting the paperwork back against the bed, the woman jarred by the sight. Law walked on, passing through the hallway with the pair trailing after him. Tony and Brook retreated nervously behind a food cart. "I'm one of the few that can send spirits on their way. And that boy doesn't have an indicator on him."

"TONY!" Sanji shouted with exasperation, causing Law and Zoro to cringe. "Get your shitty little ass in here! NOW!"

" _Awww_ , but I don't want to go!" Tony shouted back from the hallway.

"Can you keep it down?" Law asked Sanji with annoyance. "This is a _hospital_. People are trying to die here in peace. Why are you sending them to Hell with your shrilly voice?"

Tony walked into the room as an expectant couple sat on the bed, working through their Lamaze breathing together. Law turned away to face the boy that approached, looking him over. Tony's bottom lip was hanging out as he pouted, fists balled at his side. Zoro caught sight of the folded slip of paper at his waistband once more, reaching out and taking it.

"What do you want, you little mongrel?" Law asked Tony. "Got any complaints? I'll personally kick your ass if you complain about my methods."

"Wow, you are _mean_ ," Tony commented. Zoro looked up with a frown.

"He's just a kid, don't talk to him that way," he scolded the doctor, pushing his hand into his pants pocket while Law looked at him with irritation.

"He's a kid who ran away from the light and now can't reach the light. His own shitty consequence for being a shitty kid," Law said simply. "I can't put him through either door. So either he didn't die here, or he's fit enough to join the horde downstairs."

"As mean as you are…" Tony interrupted, looking at him with disdain while reaching behind him. He paused once he realized he couldn't find what he was looking for. He gasped, hands slapping to his cheeks. "I lost his name!"

" _You knew his name_?" Sanji asked incredulously while Law looked puzzled. Sanji's hands went to his hair before they went to his belt once more. "So you _did_ have something that spider wanted!"

Zoro punched Sanji hard enough to forget about that task, Sanji rubbing his head with exasperation.

Tony looked at him guiltily, toeing the floor while Law crossed his arms over his chest with building irritation. "…I did. I found it downstairs in the basement. It was just _sitting_ there, so I grabbed it. The spider told me I couldn't tell him his name. He said if I did, bad things would happen. I can't even pronounce it to say it!"

"What relevance does all of this have with me?" Law asked, gesturing. "Can I go back to doing my job?"

"The spider says _he_ ," Tony pointed at Law, "can't leave here. He's not allowed to. As long as he doesn't know his real name, he can't leave."

Brook cleared his throat delicately from the door. He peered in from the top left corner, clearly not touching the floor. "The Paranormal Kings dealt with this type of situation before. There was a demonic entity – "

"Is that anatomical skeleton talking to us like it's alive?" Law asked incredulously. Sanji and Zoro yanked him back while Brook shrieked in surprise, ready to run if he had to.

"Calm yourself, doc, he's about the reveal the plot," Zoro said pensively, narrowing his eyes.

 _There's a plot_? Sanji wondered with a bewildered look.

Brook tried again. "There was a demonic entity who was clinging to ghosts he as a living being had killed centuries ago. He was very greedy and did not want to release his victims. This was part of his curse. He fed off the reactions the ghosts caused upon the living and swelled with power. The only way to defeat him was to find his body and destroy him. Which I did. I…helped…which is why Ussop and the others don't try very hard to get rid of me."

"You know of this guy, right? The spider in the basement," Sanji insisted, looking at Law. Law looked unnerved, reluctant to say much. As they spoke, the scenery in the room changed – it switched occupants, the curtains drawn against the night city scape. The clock ticked soundlessly, hands moving quickly – lights fluttered once they were touched by the hand of a relative who set up post on the couch nearby, the newest occupant being wheeled in by a chatty nurse.

Law's brow furrowed, but he shook his head. "The hospital doesn't have much of a basement. It's just a morgue. We're a simple place, it's nothing fancy."

"But it expanded since _I_ was dead, and judging by your ugly ass clothes, it's gotten bigger and better since you walked on."

Law looked down at himself with a scowl. "…Ugly…?"

"You can choke yourself with the waistband of your pants!"

" _You're_ wearing pink!"

"Enough of the flirting," Zoro commanded, pushing them apart. "Tony said that this spider thing is insistent on keeping you here – why?"

Law gave him a puzzled look. "I wouldn't know. I've obviously with no memory of my life, just work after death. I remove souls, not… _talk_ …to them. So all of this shit is new to me."

"Then how do you know of this spider?"

"I'm assuming you're talking of the energy from downstairs that takes preventative measures in ensuring that souls don't avoid the light. It's not a spider that works down there."

"Then how do you know of it?" Sanji asked, looking fairly put out. He grasped Tony's hand tightly before the boy could sneak off.

: :

The clanking noises of the elevator squealing to a stop was loud and obnoxious. All of them rocked in pace once the doors opened. Tony hugged Zoro's head tightly while Brook hugged Sanji from behind, both of them shaking. Law looked annoyed as he stepped out into the fog, pausing between car and hall. He stepped back with a confused look.

"It's never been this thick," he murmured to himself. The doors reopened once it registered his blockage. "This energy is supposed to discourage the dead from fleeing the light. There is an entity out there that consumes souls daring enough to do that. It's not as frightening as you think – it's just an old fool that figured out the system. If you see it as a spider, then it's a spider. It takes the shape of something you fear the most to discourage you."

The four of them looked at each other skeptically.

"Are you afraid of it?" Tony asked tentatively.

Something in the distance scuffed noisily against the floor, causing the four of them to push back against the elevator's back wall. Law gave no reaction to this sound.

"No," he answered. "There's nothing I'm afraid of. Why should I be? I'm aware of death, I'm aware people go somewhere. But I am _dead_ , you morons. I do not remember what fear feels like to even conjure the thought of fear. Therefore, this concept is negative."

"What if it eats you?"

"It can't," Law answered simply, hands in his pockets. "Because fuck 'im."

"You have an annoying attitude," Zoro said.

The fog shifted with ominous movement, the sound of scraping against concrete emerging as a shrilly sound. A grey blur passed through the doorway.

"Who's fucking with the door again?" a man's voice rung out with irritation, jamming the Close Door button. Law stepped in. As the doors closed, it rang with a harsh collusion of something heavy, causing the car to rock in place. Law stood undisturbed while the quartet screamed and the living released a series of shocked curses.

"There are beings capable of rendering torment onto each other, but only if that soul remembers what torment is," Law stressed. "I don't. I've seen ghouls consume other souls, I avoid the monitors, but I don't feel _fear_."

"Then let us help you remember," Tony threatened him, punching his leg. "I'll make you feel pain again! I'll make you hurt so bad that you'll remember what it feels like to be scared!"

Law only stared down at him with condescension, forcing the kid to hide within Zoro's flannel once more. Sanji crouched down to face him.

"I am starting to like you," he said brightly. He straightened up to face Law, shoving his shirt sleeves up his arms. "Let's inflict violence upon this guy so that he'll never forget!"

"I'm _so_ afraid of you and your weeny arms," Law stated with an eye roll as the elevator doors opened, the grey blurs leaving the carriage. "In any event, the thing down there will eat souls that try to leave the light. It's their own fault that they don't want to pass on. Souls are recycled, guaranteed another chance if they chose to go, but those that don't – well, it won't hurt the world of the living to have less of them."

Brook tapped a finger against his chin with consideration. When Law looked at him, his eyes seemed to brighten with determination. Brook hastily forced the trio standing around him in front of him as protection.

"I died here," Tony insisted. "So I guess this is where I go to the light, right?"

Law looked down at him, crossing his arms while the living crowded onto the elevator around them. Their blurred shapes wavered and seemed to burn as the doors closed and the carriage began to move.

"There is nothing on you that indicates that you can," Law said slowly. There was an ear ringing crash of sound, causing the living to scream with surprise and fear. The elevator rocked, the quartet looking around themselves with alarm. Only Law was unreactive. "So you either forget where you originally died, or there's something else in store for you."

"He knows a lot more than he's letting on," Sanji said with discomfort. "That spider told him many things – "

"Then he's the spider's," Law made quotation marks with his fingers, " _problem_. He should go back down there to talk to him."

The doors opened, allowing everyone to spill out of it. The chaos amongst their fear and shouts prompted security reaction. Law walked away, reading the floor number and departments with dismissive action. The quartet followed after him hurriedly.

"There's nothing we can do," Law added, snatching a clipboard off a nearby nurse's station and reading through it. Everyone was focused on those that had disembarked from the elevator, not paying attention to the movement.

People screamed as they were slammed to the ground. The four looked back to seeing the spider emerge from the slight space around the elevator, wheezing with effort. Multiple heads on its bulging back cried out with fear and horror, screaming warnings to anyone that could listen. Multiple limbs with sprouting arms and legs wiggled about on the reflective floor to steady the spider's bulbous body. Its head leveled in their direction, tiny, baby-like arms at its neck reacting with wiggling fingers.

The ghosts screamed with horror, drawing Law's attention.

Monitors popped up from the floor and hallway walls – they wiggled and squealed with seemingly unnatural action as they fought to catch the thing's attention. The spider's multiple arms reached for them, causing the monitors to dart out of its grasp as the thing ventured in the ghosts' direction. Zoro picked up Tony while Brook shrieked shrilly, unable to move.

Law furrowed his eyebrows, looking from it to them. He lowered the clipboard.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" he asked casually, as if the hallway wasn't full of panicking people. Law swatted Brook into silence, the four of them taking cover behind him.

"i'M aPpAlLeD," the creature wheezed, displaying sharp teeth. "HoW DaRe YoU sPeAk tO mE so condescendingly after all this time?"

The spider shifted into the tall man that had faced Ussop and the others earlier. The monitors were watching silently, shifting after him with the sounds of cracking glass surrounding them. Once the quartet realized that the spider had shifted form, their faces filled with confusion. Law looked back at them.

"Who's this guy?" he asked.

"' _Who's this guy'_?" the man repeated, grinning. "You don't remember me, doctor?"

"I wouldn't ask if I did," Law stressed. "What the fuck are you doing, scaring my patients?"

"What _patients_? These ones?" At the leer sent the four's way, the quartet seemed to shrink just enough to hide behind Law. Law looked at them all with a frown. "I need to speak to them privately."

"I don't care what you do, but I do care that you're causing a disruption to my duties," Law stated, crossing his arms firmly over his chest. He looked the man over with examination before his expression filled with disapproval. "You're not part of the care group. You're one of the things that belong to the floor below. Why don't you return there and do your job? Thanks to your inattention, security has been considerably lax around here with ghosts evading our care and avoiding the light and shit."

"One less doctor would allow me to feed on the unnatural buildup of lingering souls here," the man threatened, Law furrowing his brow as he considered this words.

"What, you're going to eat me or something?" he asked, tone laced with heavy sarcasm.

The taller man suddenly expanded in height, towering over him. "I've already killed you _once_ ," he said, words heavy with satisfaction. "I can do it again."

Before the doctor could respond, the nurse with the bowtie rushed over, papers flying from his arms. He gave a shrilly dance of fear upon seeing the tall man, dropping his files onto the floor.

"What a mess," Law commented with irritation, bending to pick them up.

"This one isn't part of us!" Penguin cried anxiously, hands to his face. "RUN!"

He snatched the doctor's jacket and jerked him into a scramble away while the taller man chuckled. Seeing that the nurse was causing a diversion, Brook grabbed Sanji and Zoro by the collar of their shirts and scooped up Tony with the other, running in the other direction. The man's head snapped back to their direction before he reformed into the spider.

Voices filled the halls with shrill alarm. Monitors once again popped out into view. Both Sanji and Zoro watched as the spider snatched the mannequins by their heads, ripping them from wiggling bodies. Monitors screamed and squealed like animals as their bodies dropped behind the spider's moving form. The ghosts screamed in alarm, running on their own as Brook led the way.

"We're _ghosts_!" Zoro reminded them, veering through a wall and causing them to follow hastily. "Why are we running in a straight line?"

As they reappeared into a room busy with a birth, the spider slammed through the nurses, family and doctor waiting for the woman to push. The living scattered like bowling pins as the spider swept through the walls.

"yOu HaVe sOmeThINg tHat BEloNgs tO mE," it snarled, limbs waving about as multiple heads cried out with fear and agony. "I WaNt iT bAcK!"

"I don't have it!" Tony cried over Brook's shoulder. "I lost it!"

"i _SmELl_ iT oN YoU!"

"It must be important!" Sanji wheezed, suddenly whirling into a nearby wall. The others followed, but none of them were more surprised than the other when the four of them fell straight down through a dark, tight tunnel. All of them screamed in surprise as their souls registered falling in the first place. The spider shouted out with frustration, large body caught at the mouth of the tunnel. The heads on its back screamed and cried, arms reaching for the walls in an effort to brace it against the darkness.

"ReTuRn tO Me _rIgHt NoW_!" it shouted, voice rumbling and vibrating against the tight walls of the tunnel.

The four of them bounced, producing grunts as they rolled over one another and sprawled out onto a stretch of cold, unforgiving floor. The spider's limbs banged and smashed against the tunnel walls as the creature struggled to continue pursuing them. Brook looked up, clearly able to see the thing stuffing itself into the small space. His face wrinkled with bewilderment as Tony and the others slowly gathered themselves together.

"i Am ToO _fAt_ fOr THis," the spider then grunted, extending two of his closest limbs to his face. Meticulously, he began ripping extra limbs from his legs, baby arms holding the appendage close to allow him to do this. With each bite, he roared with frustration. The heads screamed in agony.

"Curiouser and curiouser," Brook murmured thoughtfully.

Sanji yanked him to his feet. "Get up!"

"We're ghosts," Brook stated, slowly brushing himself up as Tony clung to Zoro frightfully. "So why did we hurt falling down this tunnel? And why can't that thing follow us?"

Sanji whipped his head up just in time to see falling pieces of arms and legs hit the tunnel walls on their way down. He covered himself as broken arms and feet rained around them. Dancing with disgust and dismay, he quickly aligned himself with Tony and Zoro out of the danger zone. Brook's face registered surprise as impact registered upon him. He caught an arm, noticing the old jewelry on various fingers – a leg with a foot attached had the remains of a shoe on it that suggested it had come from the early century.

"This tunnel," he said slowly, facing the others, "is the doorway _down_. A body chute."

Brook stilled, then his hands clamped to his face with horror. " _We're in Hell_!"

"nOt Yet!" the spider threatened, inching further down into the tunnel. "NoT UnTiL i gEt yOu!"

Sanji looked up with dismay as Zoro comforted Tony, all of them with horrified expressions. They looked around themselves, turning in slow circles. All around them was a scene of nothingness – darkness preventing them from seeing into any distance. The chill caused their arms to ripple with apprehension, a shrill wind whistling from nowhere. Sound seemed to carry, echoing in the distance. The spider's curses and struggles were the only noisy action around them.

"A body chute," Zoro repeated numbly. He recalled seeing the souls of those Law had deemed worthy of the bottom door being dropped down here. So where did the people go?

Sanji caught his breath as Tony looked around, eyes wide with fear. Scanning the darkness, he couldn't fathom taking any direction without any indication there was somewhere to go to. With the spider's voice ringing around them, the voices swallowed up by an eerie, unnatural stillness, he couldn't tell where the wind was coming from. He rubbed his arms as Brook fell to his knees, bracing himself against the hard floor.

"Well," Sanji said slowly, his mouth numb, "at least Hell isn't as hot as it's depicted to be."

"I was a good person," Tony whispered, clinging to Zoro, "I don't think I belong here."

"OnCe I GeT yOu," the spider snarled, teeth sinking deep into one of its own legs, "i'M GoIng tO TAke yOu ThEre."

The four looked up at the spider with apprehension, watching it inch further down the tunnel. It struggled to do so, cursing every little while as more and more human limbs rained down onto the floor. Sanji looked to the others, wearing an apologetic expression.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "This is my responsibility. Look, when he gets down here, I'll run in that direction – Brook, dumb-ass, you guys go in _that_ direction – do whatever it takes to get back up there – "

" _How_?" Zoro asked, looking up at the chute above. He then looked down to see that Brook was touching the floor, resting his weight against it. He hopped to measure his jumping height, then looked at Sanji incredulously. "We're almost human down here, with absolutely no ghostly ability to do so."

Sanji swallowed noisily, looking up to see that the spider had gotten himself trapped. It roared with frustration.

"Limbo," Brook whispered, mandible falling open. "This is…this is limbo…the in-between. Where we wait to hear of our fate – "

The four stilled when something crossed their hearing. The spider ceased speaking as well, the mouths closing with abrupt recognition of a new sound. Tony hugged Zoro tightly, holding his breath as they waited for the sound once more.

"Zoro?" The sound emerged into the voice with a tentative wave, then cast over them like a gentle blanket. "Sanji? Are you there?"

"It's USSOP!" Brook cried joyfully, clapping his hands.

The spider screamed with frustration.

"Brook? T-Tony?"

"Follow the direction of his voice!" Brook commanded, pointing off towards a direction. Everywhere they looked was a never-ending shadow of darkness, and the trio was hesitant to do so. But as Ussop continued saying their names, they managed to pinpoint the direction he was calling from. It seemed to build with strength and start to fade, suggesting that Ussop was moving away from them. Hurriedly, the spider cursing noisily behind them – his voice fading with their distance from him – the quartet continued in the direction Ussop's voice was the loudest. Eventually the darkness began to lessen, revealing shadowed hospital walls and dark, empty corridors.

" _USSOP_!" Brook cried.

"Brook?" Ussop returned tentatively, voice echoing closely nearby. "Where are you?"

" _Here_ , Ussop! Keep calling our names!"

"Sanji?"

"I'm here!" Sanji cried joyfully, searching for the man. "Keep calling for us! Stop walking!"

"Guys, security is catching up to me, so hurry up – where are you?"

"Keep calling our names!" Zoro shouted, Tony contributing with, "Ussop! Ussop, keep talking to us!"

"You guys sound real funny – oh, hi, yes sir, I'm lost," Ussop then said nervously.

The darkness still in place, none of them could see the man, but they could hear him talking to another with a stern voice. Brook whipped around, searching fruitlessly for Ussop and the others while the trio kept close by, urging Ussop to invite them. Once it seemed like Ussop's voice was rapidly being moved away, the quartet chased after the sound desperately. The shadows began to fall over the corridor once more, voices echoing and disappearing into the dark emptiness around them.

" _Ussop_!"

"Ussop, call our names!"

"Ussop, don't forget us!"

The spider roared with frustration in the distance, a noisy clatter of sound exploding around it.

"I CaN sEe yoU!" it cried joyfully, moving rapidly in their direction. "i WiLL _gEt_ yOu!"

The quartet started to cry out with fear once they realized the darkness was settling over them, the sounds of the spider emerging closer towards them.

" _USSOP_!" Zoro shouted out, voice ringing out like a blast.

"GAH!" Ussop cried in alarm, the area alit with light once more. "Stop shouting in my ear!"

The light was like a bright explosion over their heads. The quartet covered their eyes with reaction, cringing under the brilliance. Brook managed to see that the body chute above them had opened, revealing the length of the tunnel that the spider had mangled earlier. The doctor was peering in on them with a bewildered look, Penguin at his side with a fretful look. Ussop was clearly behind them, dancing in place while a security guard lectured him for his lack of clearance in a secured zone.

"Get us out of here!" Brook cried, reaching up for him. "Hurry! Hurry, it's coming! He invited us! Ussop invited us!"

"USSOP SAY OUR NAMES!" Zoro bellowed in impatience, hefting Tony over his head.

"STOP SHOUTING IN MY FACE!" the doctor snapped back, he and Ussop snapping at the exact same time. But he reached in, the distance of the tunnel shortening with an alarming snap. Brook snagged his hand while reaching out and allowing the trio to grasp him – Law yanked them out of the chute with Penguin assisting, Ussop being dragged to the elevator while the security guard pulled him.

The spider screamed with fury from close behind them. Sanji could feel the thing's fingers at his Reeboks, looking back in time to see the spider's enraged face as those baby arms reached for him. Sanji screamed with alarm, but Penguin shut the door on those fingers, the noisy bang of impact causing all of them to shout.

The doctor looked at the quartet with alarm as Ussop was handcuffed, doors starting to close.

"Brook! Sanji, Zoro, Tony!" he shouted hastily. "I hear you guys! I can hear you!"

Brook paused as the trio raced for the elevator, Zoro preventing the doors from closing by slapping the arrow indicator. The security guard gave a puzzled look outside as the trio clamored against Ussop, hiding behind him while looking out fitfully for the spider. The walls seemed to ring with its angry screams, a ceaseless pounding echoing throughout the corridors. From the nearby ward, babies began to cry in alarm.

Ussop slapped his hands over his ears, giving a fitful shout of alarm.

Brook grabbed the doctor's arm while Penguin fretted at the door that bounced with the spider's efforts to crawl out. "Come with us. There's obviously a reason behind that thing's existence, and it extends to you."

"I've got a job to do," Law snapped at the skeleton, jerking his arm away. "No one is allowed to take me from it."

"Maybe you should listen to them," Penguin argued fretfully, pushing at him. "This hasn't happened before! That thing is conscious – that thing isn't one of us!"

" _Ridiculous_! There is _nothing_ to fear!"

"BROOK!" Zoro snarled, slapping the doors open again, much to the security guard's irritation as he jabbed at the button opposite of Zoro's pressing finger. "Let's go!"

"What is going on?" Ussop snapped.

"I don't know!" The security guard snapped back, jabbing repeatedly at the Close Doors indicator. "I don't know! Is this thing out of order?"

Brook grabbed Law's arm and dragged him after him, much to the doctor's dismay. Penguin gathered up all his files and hurried away. The door on the floor kept bouncing violently, the handle jingling noisily. The spider continued to spit curses and scream as the elevator doors finally slid shut. Once they did, the pounding stopped.


	8. Chapter 8

**HS:** It's hard for any of these guys to keep their thoughts to themselves – or hands, for that matter lol This chapter reveals more of the spider. I'm plowing through this story with updated edits and revealing stuff I hadn't posted yet, so it's coming along pretty well. :D

 **Rainbow D. Jay** : You're right! Now for Law to remember – or Zoro, for remembering he actually holds the key!

 **Part Eight:**

 **Your Past Defines Who You Are**

* * *

Luffy looked back at Ussop with concern. The man was sitting in such a hunched position that it looked wholly uncomfortable – being that he was the only one in the back seat. What they couldn't see was that Sanji and Zoro were squishing against each other on one door, with Law and Brook squished against the other. Tony sat on Zoro's lap with a sullen frown. Law was staring out the window with a stunned look, clearly dazzled by the modern world. Outside of the hospital, he seemed to have lost a glow that none of them had noticed before – his clothes were old-fashioned and well worn, his features haggard. Like Brook, he was out of date.

"You okay, Ussop?" Luffy asked tentatively as Franky took a turn back to their complex. It had was near evening, time having slipped by the ghosts' recognition without mercy. They were riding in silence at Ussop's request, so that he may hear the ghosts' voices without too much trouble. "That's a funny spot you got there."

"It is _crowded_ back here," Ussop snarled. "Instead of _losing_ their numbers, they _grew_ in numbers."

"Introduce yourself, doctor," Brook encouraged Law, who looked up with a start at being addressed. "This is Ussop, that's Luffy and that's Franky."

"BROOK!" Ussop howled. "STOP BRINGING HOME MORE GHOSTS!"

"I know these morons by sight," Law snapped at Brook, returning his attention out the window as a car with loud music caught his attention. "What's that sound?"

"Oh, that is music," Brook answered lightly. "I believe that a lovely hit by Ariana Gra – "

"What sort of living society is this where advanced technology allows for such horrid sounds? It sounds like demons calling out from Hell."

"This doctor speaks another language," Ussop muttered bitterly, causing Sanji and Zoro to react with a start. "German, I think. Very angry, rapid-fire German – like the other foreigner. I have no idea what he is saying but he sounds very pissed off."

Law wore a startled expression upon hearing this. It looked as if he'd suddenly remembered he was a foreigner himself. But he exhaled noisily. "This was not the city I knew…where are the horses? The wagons?"

"He's inquiring about horses and wagons," Brook said helpfully. "Definitely not from your space of time, my fellow hunters."

"When did you die, doc?" Ussop asked with a suffering sigh.

Law looked at him with a scowl, pulling his jackets over his chest with a modest action. "That shit's personal."

Brook relayed the answer. Ussop rolled his eyes. "This is the infamous doc they've been blabbering about, and he's _not_ a polite person."

Law looked at the others with an affronted expression. "Have you been talking shit about me all this time?"

"Enough from you and your haughty attitude, Final Countdown," Sanji snapped, reaching out to push his face back. Zoro wore a puzzled expression at the reference. "Ussop - it took you long enough to come get us. We were _this close_ to dying again!"

"Look," Ussop snapped back, "I heard what I heard! It was because of Luffy capturing what the guy _actually_ was that spurred some spirit in me to actually go out and see if you were successful! To know that this – _thing_ – is some _demon_ in disguise - ! Of course I had some hesitation!"

"He wasn't even _that_ scary," Sanji muttered while Zoro snorted.

"Check your tightie-whities for the real answer," he retorted, Sanji looking at him in outrage.

"Sanji, did you scary pee?" Tony asked with concern, then laughed uproariously.

"The bottom door leads to limbo, doc," Brook whispered to Law. "Where souls await reassigning."

"I'll have to submit a complaint about that whiny dapper that interrupted my routine," Law muttered bitterly of Penguin. "It's because of him that I was forced into this mess."

"He saved your miserable after-life!" Zoro snapped at him.

Law kicked the seat in front of him, then snarled as Franky lurched forward with a gasp. The Tundra gave a swerve that caused more than one head to whip about. "It's so small in here! I cannot breathe or stretch!"

"He's a tall man," Brook whispered to Ussop.

"Did someone just kick me?" Franky asked, white in the face. Law kicked him again, then leaned forward to look at the others.

"Pulling me away from my job screams sabotage!" he snapped, Ussop drawing back from his angry voice. Sanji and Zoro were doing the same, Sanji being pushed out the window. He reached back and clasped onto the orange and gray flannel the other man wore. "If I am away from it, I cannot send souls on their way! They'll foul up the hospital with their aimless presence. There is only a certain number of us that can do this job!"

"They're back to screaming at each other," Ussop said wearily, wiping his hands down his face. "I have no idea what he's saying, but it sounds like murder to me."

Luffy chuckled. "Everyone that feels passionate about a subject sounds scary to you, Ussop."

"Doc's freaking out because he's unhealthily obsessed with his job!" Sanji retorted. "He's not very grateful."

"Grateful for _what_?" Ussop managed to eke out as politely as he could.

"The spider was trying to keep him in the hospital! Tony found his name, _lost_ his name, but says the doc and the spider are very connected. Plus, the guy addressed doc here as someone he knows. _Law_ ," Sanji cut himself off from Ussop to lean across Zoro and Ussop to address the scowling man, "who was that guy?"

"I don't know him," Law insisted. "We've never interacted before."

"He said he'd already killed you once," Zoro said gravely. "You can't remember your own death – how can you forget your own killer?"

" _Definitely_ German," Ussop mumbled thoughtfully to himself.

"I don't remember taking that as a language course," Franky said with a sigh, Luffy rifling through his phone.

"I have no idea what he's saying, but Sanji's annoying voice is giving me the gist of things."

" _Annoying_?" Sanji cried in outrage.

Law furrowed his brow with curiosity. "I fell ill with the rest of them…but that's not how I died."

"He said a bunch of them were sick, but he didn't die of that," Sanji relayed to Ussop. "He's been dead for so long he doesn't remember details."

"This area was once wiped out by smallpox," Ussop offered. "We did the cemetery once, and most of them were smallpox victims from a settlement some miles away."

"I discovered something that made me want to stay," Law said. He continued to look puzzled. He suddenly patted at all of his pockets, then spilled out of the car once Franky parked. The ghosts fell out on their own as Ussop listened to the sudden silence. Once he recognized that their shouts were coming from outside the vehicle, he heaved a massive sigh. Franky and Luffy looked back at him, clearly unable to hear the conversation. Ussop hastily caught them up as he opened the back door and climbed out.

While Ussop spoke to Luffy and Franky, Law said, "What an _ugly_ living area. Smells like shit everywhere I turn. Worse than what it originally was. At least it's not spilling out into the streets."

"Wait until you get inside," Zoro said.

"Both foreigners are upset at something," Ussop relayed gravely. "Both of them sound like they want to kill someone."

Law looked to Brook as they all walked as a large group towards the living's apartment. "Why did you do this? I have a job to do."

"That man had said he'd killed you once," Brook said gently, as Tony raced with cheer alongside Ussop, clearly happy he wasn't going to heaven any time soon. "And Tony already confessed to finding your real name but losing it. The spider mentioned that if you were to remember your name, something bad will happen. Most likely to him so he's very eager to make sure you remain in the dark of your true self. I think it's important that we rescue you until we can fix the situation."

Law sighed noisily, hands in his jacket pockets. "I don't even know that man. I've been so focused on my routine that I've lost all memories of him. You say he's my killer? Fuck if I remember that event. Having this disruption is causing me intense anxiety. What if I end up killing you all out of agitation?"

"Try it," Sanji snapped at him, "and Tony and I will force you to remember fear like you've never remembered it before!"

"Yeah," Law agreed skeptically, reaching out to poke at his shoulder pads, " _that_ frightens me."

"ARGH!"

"Enough!" Ussop snapped back at them, causing one woman to look up from her car keys. Ignoring her puzzled look, he strode on to say, "I can't stand to hear you guys all talking at once! What is your ultimate goal, now? First it was to find the kid, _then_ his name, _then_ return him to the hospital – but now all of you guys are here, so what's next?"

"You there," Law said, reaching out to poke Franky's arm and having him look around with a startled regard. "What is wrong with your hair? Is it acceptable for men to look like this, now? Men are allowed to wear crop top shirts?"

"Hey, they were acceptable in my time," Sanji said with a shrug at Franky's outfit – a cut muscle shirt that was sheered high to reveal surprisingly defined abs. Ussop mumbled this conversation to him, causing Franky to burst into a wide grin.

"My dudes, we can dress however we want!" he exclaimed proudly, causing Law to cringe away from him.

"You're so easily distracted!" Zoro snapped at Law. "Enough with your asinine curiosities! We need to figure out what to do with that thing and get Tony to the light."

Law looked back at him with a frown. He then looked at Tony, who tried to hide behind Brook as they all tromped up the stairway. "He's not dead," Law then insisted with a puzzled look. "There is no indicator on him."

"But we're _all_ dead, that's why we are doing this," Sanji stated with gritted teeth.

"We're _all_ dead, yes, that's obvious." Law paused, looking him over. He then gave a tired scowl. "'tch. I can't get over that feathered hair to take you seriously..."

"FOCUS! Tony is just like us," Sanji insisted, gesturing at the boy, "otherwise, how are we seeing him?"

"All of us are given that unsightly glow of a dead person," Law said as they all tromped into the apartment. He was focused on examining his newest surroundings, hands tucked into his pockets. "Good God, it's a good thing I lost my sense of smell when I died…look at all of this trash…"

"And Tony doesn't have it?" Brook asked, the four of them looking at the boy with renewed interest. He sat down on the couch as Luffy and Franky settled in the kitchen, Ussop standing close by to hear what was being said. Zoro tried to be helpful by relaying the conversation to him, but Ussop could not understand a word he was saying.

Tony tucked his hands between his knees, looking up at them anxiously.

"No," Law commented, reaching out and touching his forehead, much to Tony's discomfort. "He's in-between. Perhaps he's brain dead, but I can't assess him very well outside of the hospital. I lost most of my precious powers once you lot kidnapped me."

"You mean," Zoro snarled at Law, "you could have learned this in the hospital? Before wasting our time insulting us?"

Law towered over him, giving his height extra oomph by taking a few inches off the floor. Sanji scowled at this, trying to perform the same method. Tony had to copy him, both of them stretching as far as they could in an effort to leave the floor. Brook demonstrated his own useful float, causing them to snarl at him.

"If you'll use what's left of your brain, cherry blossoms, it was _you_ dragging _me_ around corners with a pathetic scary story to tell."

Zoro shrugged. "Frankly, I, too, am caught up in a mess that didn't involve my hands but now that I am here, there's no point crying about it."

"What if we're not really dead…?" Sanji questioned, knowing the answer before Law looked at him with exasperation. Sanji rolled his eyes, sitting down with a flounce on the nearby La-Z-Boy chair. "Whatever, I don't want to hear it…"

"The fact that he's able to wander this world while still alive in the previous one, well…it might be that he's being forcefully sustained while his spirit has given up," Law continued with a puzzled look, hands sliding back into his jacket pockets. Franky turned on the television set, distracting him from his assessment while a loud action flick popped up. Law ended up venturing towards it with an awed expression while the graphics seemed to pop from the television, Tony looking up at the others with a guilty expression.

"I honestly don't know," he insisted, "but…everything that I told you so far was true."

" _Tony_ ," Sanji warned. "You've said so many things so far that turned out to be lies – "

"I _did_ lie a lot! But I didn't lie about the basement. I was down there," Tony insisted. "And I _did_ find Law's name, but I can't remember what it looked like or how to say it! The spider was very awful about what he was saying – he bragged about knowing all of you. That's how I knew of all of you."

"Maybe this thing has access to death records," Ussop said, furrowing his brow as Luffy sat nearby with a recorder, watching him with concern. "Demons are very knowledgeable about other people without us knowing how. If we can find the doc's true name – "

Sanji rose from the chair with a pop, jerking Law's jacket open once more, the doctor reacting with a startled cry. "Donquixote is the name on one of his tags," Sanji stated to Ussop, "and Law is his first name. He insists that Donquixote isn't his name."

"That's _not_ my name," Law insisted, covering himself up again. His eyes drifted up and away from them all of a sudden, the ghosts reacting with a start to his avert of attention. They were prepared to run, but as Law strode down the hall, Sanji hurried after him, dragging him back by his jacket. With a huff Law resettled himself, straightening his jacket. "Sorry. Old habits. There is a woman next door with a dying wish."

"I'll console her!" Sanji cried, hurrying off in that direction.

Zoro snatched Law's arm once he started moving again, forcing him to stay focused. "Your last name isn't Donquixote?"

"No," Law insisted impatiently. "That's the last name of…"

He trailed off, clearly looking lost. Zoro indicated his own flannel, then pointed at him. "Why don't you look at your thingy?"

Law then patted his pockets for his notebook. Flipping through a few pages, he found the one he was looking for. "Aha! Donquixote…"

"How do you spell that?" Ussop asked, gesturing for a pen that Franky supplied to him. Brook helped him out. "I can give this to Sabo – he gets off work in a few hours, he can locate the history behind it."

"He was a supplier to the region," Law continued over him with a thoughtful tone. "Brought the hospital basic supplies from the east, and helped with the efforts in settling settler affairs..."

He trailed off, looking to the ceiling with a thoughtful expression. He looked down to his notebook, straining to remember these details. As he stood there, the long ago pencil scribblings he'd made began to reappear. His own handwriting gave him a patient's symptoms and a treatment suggestion he'd made on his own. Remembering that particular patient caused him to remember the day he stood at a dying man's bedside, watching his life slowly leave him.

It was a cold winter's morning, and he'd pulled on an extra jacket. The hospital floor was full of patients that were in the throes of their life span, attended to by desperate personnel who'd given up hope in success. Despite the fire crackling at the nearby fireplace, Law could see his breath as his cold fingers wrote down the man's dying request.

'Inform the captain of the blankets,' his handwriting told him. The last word was underlined twice. 'Smallpox.'

Law remembered thinking how hostile it was that one man could be this calculating, this cruel to other human beings. As he scanned the dying, he saw one nurse pulling blankets from their bodies and replacing them with others.

"This man," he said aloud, still lost in the memory, "supplied used blankets from the hospital to those living outside of the settlement. To…further allow the genocide of others so that settlers could take over."

Brook swallowed tightly while the others looked uncomfortable. Leaning over to Ussop, Brook whispered what Law had told him while the doctor looked haggard with the memory. Sanji reappeared, whistling. Once he saw that there was a heavy scene in place, he quietly made his way to Zoro's side.

Ussop furrowed his brow. "Nothing of that was mentioned during our run at the cemetery, only that a lot of people died because of the disease."

Law looked at him with a frown. "If you are looking for a demon, then _he_ would be capable of being that sort of despicable creature. I don't know how I wound up with this nametag – I wasn't related to him in any way. But I imagine that if he kept my real name from me, I'm going to assume that it wasn't to tell on him for his criminalities."

"That's a long ago crime," Zoro muttered as Brook relayed this to Ussop, who continued to wear an uncomfortable expression. Luffy was rewinding and replaying the conversation, but he had only wisps of Law speaking in fluid German, the occasional whisper from the others fueling him with only their presence and not their subject. He gave a low growl of frustration. "But certainly someone capable of being that evil would continue to being evil."

"I suppose it wouldn't do any good now," Law said awkwardly. "Considering how it's now only a part of the past. But old habits die hard. Releasing his name might either harm him or me."

"Maybe learning his true name might release him as the spider and allow you to send him to Hell," Sanji suggested. He lit up. "That's Tony's purpose! This is why he wasn't able to move on – his purpose was to help _you_ get this guy into that bottom door!"

"But I also want to get _him_ into that bottom door," Law stated, looking at Brook hotly. His hands seemed to shake as they lifted from his pockets. "I want to get him into that bottom doorway _so bad_ \- !"

Brook shrieked with horror.

"Well, and us?" Sanji asked, waving an arm to pull Law's attention his way. Law reluctantly looked at him. "Zoro and I are meant for the light too, right?"

"You mongrels died outside, I don't care what happens to you."

Sanji reached for him with a snarl, Zoro knocking his hands off course.

" _Focus_ here, David Bowie," he commanded, Ussop catching the name with a lift of his eyebrows. "If these are all the pieces of the puzzle, then it's time to put the puzzle together. And clearly, we're the ones to do so. His reign of terror ends here. That's why we were put together."

"You really think so, Zoro?" Tony asked him, lighting up with relief. He bounced on the seat. "Then it would make so much sense! If it's correct that we don't have a sense of time, then my spirit might have decided to wander when the rest of me was kept alive! If he can't see where I'm supposed to go, then my body hasn't died yet – the rest of me is still in that hospital! Maybe on a floor or tower Law hasn't been."

"So then this means you know your full name," Zoro said gently.

Tony sighed. "I do. But…that's not important. What's important is finding _this_ guy's real name! I had it, but because I obviously have nowhere to put it, I must've lost it somewhere. So we need to travel backward – "

"There's no time for that," Sanji said. "This Sabo guy can do the research on this Donquixote guy and Law can then remember his name."

"But if doc can't remember his own name," Zoro said slowly, "it might not matter. What matters is that this spider did something very wrong in the past, tried to cover it up and now that he can be put away, he's putting effort into keeping us silent about it. It's because of Tony that this was able to happen. So try treating him with a little more respect, Steve Urkel."

Law was aware that Zoro was bad mouthing him, but he had no idea who Steve Urkel was. He looked down at Tony with a scowl as the kid beamed up at him. Law's upper lip curled with disdain. "At the end of it, I'll allow him a little freedom in going out the way he wants. I can help him, of course, but for a small fee – "

" _Gah_! You're so mean! I hate doctors because they let me die!"

Law lit up with what could only be described as a horrific delight. "I'll let you die, little boy. I'm good at that."

Tony winced. "I mean, not _you_ – ugh, I hate you…"

"Stop threatening him," Zoro growled, standing up to insert himself between them.

"What are you going to do about it, besides make me mad when you drip your gross fluids on me?"

Sanji pushed against them to separate them, looking at Tony sternly.

"See what happens when you're nothing but a liar? If you don't want to wind up like the rest of us, then you'll start straightening up and telling us the gosh darn truth! No more shitty lies or omitting certain details!"

Tony rolled his eyes and gave the biggest sigh he could give. "God…what _ever_!"

Brook wore an understanding smile as he watched them all interact. He realized why Tony wasn't telling most truths – the boy had repeatedly expressed how long he had been sick, and how much fun he wanted to have now that he was a ghost. He was deliberately withholding information from the group to have as much fun as possible before moving on. While some of the lies weren't directly hurtful, they did extend the time Tony had with the others as they searched for clues.

But Brook believed Tony when the boy mentioned he'd had and lost Law's real name. That expression on his face was a truth.

Ussop listened to the constant flow of voices – he understood that the doctor was agitating them with what sounded like insults; Zoro spoke up harshly for Tony, who sounded, frankly, like a _brat_. Ussop understood a little of his circumstances, but as a party looking in, he could only reach a judgement he was comfortable with. It seemed outlandish that a group of ghosts with no connection to each other could team up in such a way to out what sounded like a demonic presence haunting the hospital; but all of them sounded as if they were men his age that could have been his friends (if they were alive). In a way, he felt for them; in another, he felt detached because he could only listen to their conversation and aid only when they needed him. Like an accessory.

He still felt afraid – hearing them was one thing, but possibly seeing them would be another. He absolutely did not want to see the spider – that man had creeped him out just enough to leave him with chills at the memory.

: :

When Sabo came home with takeout, both the living and the dead gathered in the living room while he set up his laptop and started typing out names.

"Donquixote," Sabo repeated carefully, typing it into the search bar. After several moments, the face of the man they'd seen the other night popped up in an old photograph. The living reacted with horror and excitement while the dead squirmed uncomfortably.

"That's him," Law murmured thoughtfully over Sabo's shoulder. He reached out and pressed the Enter key to further the search, Sabo leaping out of his chair with fright as his screen changed. Once the site loaded, they were treated to a brief history on Doflamingo Donquixote's infamous supply runs to the area in early stages of settling. "They don't have very many details on him. This is basic information."

"Either the photograph makes him look frightening, or he was just an evil person inside and out," Brook mumbled. "Because that looks like a post-mortem photograph."

"What's that?" Sanji asked.

"A photo taken after they were dead," Ussop answered him absently, shivering.

"They wouldn't," Law said, pushing Enter again and getting only the loading results of the city's history. "Because he didn't die."

"He said he's still alive," Brook told Ussop.

"He's still alive," Ussop told Sabo, who resettled with a discomforted expression.

"I can check with my friend at the city archives," Sabo said slowly, returning to the original search page. He drew out his email. "But that wouldn't make any sense to haunt us if he wasn't actually dead."

"When I was alive, he wasn't dead," Law clarified.

"Then how did you die?" Zoro asked him.

"I don't know."

"Body search him," Sanji said flippantly, folding his arms over his chest as he reached out and touched Sabo's computer. He was frustrated when he couldn't make any contact with it. "I barely had a chance with these things! I can't remember _how_ if I don't think I didn't do it!"

"I can!" Tony cried, slapping at the keyboard. "Aww, why can't I touch things? Zoro, can you teach me?"

Law looked down at himself, patting his own chest and stomach with searching hands. He turned away from them as Brook gently guided Sanji and Tony away from Sabo's laptop, chiding them for their overeager hands. Unbuttoning his shirt, Law saw the bullet wounds that bore gaping holes in his chest and stomach. Shocked to see his own body covered in mortal wounds that didn't leave a trace outside the front of his clothes, Law counted seven holes. Zoro leaned over with a curious look, able to see through the space to Law's faded shirt. He could see that the back of Law's shirt was stained in blood easily covered with his other jacket.

Law looked up, stricken. The memory of Doflamingo laughing as he shot him came back to him in violent detail – the cold of the winter night, the bite of the icy wind, Doflamingo's deranged voice carrying in the silence between hospital and town. Now that he remembered the cold, he couldn't help but shiver in response.

For just a brief moment, he felt the tinges of fear he'd felt knowing he was a dead man. It left him with a heavy feeling that felt like slow suffocation.

'Who are you to say anything at all?' Doflamingo had asked him. ' _Nobody_! No one will remember your name!'

Law exhaled harshly, covering himself up. Now that he remembered, his fingertips blackened from frostbite, hands taking on the color of a frozen corpse. The other ghosts caught sight of this as he lost his 'normal' appearance, Tony looking thoroughly horrified.

"Even your lips are blue," Brook observed, poking at Law's face.

"You're a human popsicle," Sanji said with disgust.

Law slapped Brook's hand away.

"I was _murdered_ ," he said tightly, buttoning his shirt back up. "Because he knew that I knew of his evil doings. There were two of us that did – one had died already from intentional small pox infestation and I had received the information from him. Because of his position, Doflamingo couldn't allow anyone to know of his wrong deeds. He'd hoped to keep that by stealing my name."

"Then what is it?" Zoro asked, furrowing his brow.

Law was still at a loss, thinking hard about his own history but seeing only what was presented to him at the moment. His violent death, his routine as a doctor – the notebook with the things he'd remembered writing that day. He shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know."

Tony scrunched his face up as Sabo spoke to the others, Ussop focusing on the conversation outside of the ghosts' circle. "If only I'd put it in a safer place, but I have no pockets!"

After fixing his shirt back into his pants and adjusting his suspenders, Law slowly sat on the couch arm rest nearby, looking unsettled. "How is it that something that monstrous can have this much memory but none of us are allotted the same?"

"Like you said," Sanji mumbled, lighting up a cigarette, "ghosts are only focused on the last day of our deaths if we ignore the light. So why did you ignore the light?"

Law looked at him with a frown. After the multiple blasts of gunfire died away, Doflamingo's maniacal laughter fading off into the distance, Law remembered looking up at the snowy night sky. The last thing on his mind were the patients in the hospital – _who would care for them? Who would take over when he was gone_? With those flitting memories, it seemed that Doflamingo's face loomed over him for a long time. When Law had re-opened his eyes, he was still looking over the patients he'd cared for – only there seemed to be a constant stream of them. A never ending stream that demanded his attention until the day he ran into the pair setting opposite him, looking at him with similar dumb expressions.

He scoffed at the pair. "Just looking at your faces ruins every timeline I could have had. That ugly hair and missing nose haunts any dream I might have had in the afterlife."

Sanji rose from his position with a roar while Zoro looked insulted. Tony snickered.

"I never saw it," Law answered Sanji's question. "I only remembered my patients."

"Then who taught you your ridiculous routine?" Sanji asked impatiently.

"Who taught you to open the doors?" Zoro added. "Move things? Modern medicine?"

Law struggled to think while Brook leaned over Ussop's head to catch him up on the discussion. Ussop looked startled as he relayed the conversation to the others, Sabo hastily taking more notes. After awhile, Law shook his head. " _I don't know_. It's been too long since then and now. All I know is that I'm a doctor that cares for my patients and there never seems to be an end to them."

" _Trah_ ," Tony muttered, face scrunching with concentration. "Tra-c-tor. Trash…Tra…Trac – no, Traff…Travis Barker. No…Traffle…mmm…waffles…"

"Waffles does sound good," Ussop mumbled, Luffy's stomach gurgling noisily at that moment. "Dinner break!"

"We _just_ had dinner," Sabo reminded them impatiently. "I brought home a pizza."

"It wasn't enough," Franky admitted. "Waffles does sound good."

" _We just ate_!"

"I can eat again!" Luffy exclaimed. "Let's go get some!"

"I would love some waffles," Ussop said.

"We're going out to eat!" Brook cried out with joy.

"NO, you all are _staying_ put!" Ussop snapped, causing Sanji and Zoro to jolt with the harshness of his voice. "I want to enjoy my food and not have you guys bothering me while I eat!"

Zoro put a finger to his lips, signaling to the others to remain quiet. Ussop scowled around the area, looking for any sign of them while the others made to get ready to go. "I mean it!" he stressed. "I don't want you guys following us!"

: :

The living sat at one booth while the dead occupied another. They sat stiffly facing each other, the sounds of a top twenty satellite station playing overhead with minimal occupation allowing gentle sounds of conversation around them. While most of them had been a patron of a restaurant before, they could not remember the smells nor the taste of food. Sanji was startled to realize this himself – he only had his beef stew and French bread on his mind. It was frustrating looking at a plate full of things he knew he'd had a hand in before, but not remember the taste or texture of it.

Tony pouted, fist supporting his hairless head.

"I wish I could have those, too," he muttered, glaring bitterly at the plates the living had ordered. "I know I liked them…"

"Keep your voices down," Brook advised. "Ussop can hear us, but our voices will be muffled amongst all this noise. Sanji, voice at _whisper_ volume only."

"You can't silence me!" Sanji hissed at him, hunkering over the table. "I'm outraged! Look at this crap they're eating – it's only _crap_! What has food come to since I've been gone?"

"Nothing has mold or meal worms in it," Law said wondrously.

"I miss gyudon bowls," Zoro muttered sullenly.

"Look at their waitress," Brook said with a whistle. "It should be a crime to have so many curves at once!"

"A beauty carved by the hand of God!" Sanji added on a high whisper, he and Brook leaning far over to watch her walk away. Zoro kicked him out of the booth while Law's head perked up, looking over at a table of three older men. He rose off the bench with a determined expression, Brook snatching his coat while Tony glared at the living once more.

"Outside of the hospital is only murder," Brook advised, Law sitting with a heavy sigh.

"So," Zoro asked slowly, "with your eyes all frozen, do you only see in ice?"

"I _wish_ I lost my vision – that floppy hair of yours makes my bullet wounds ache."

"I wish I remembered what soda tasted like," Tony whined over Law's response. "And syrup – I couldn't have any of that."

"We should look for your body," Sanji said after picking himself up. "If it's still alive, we can find it."

"NO MORE MISSIONS," Zoro snarled at him. "We're overloaded as it is!"

"Brook, how did you help these guys defeat the demon?" Sanji then asked the skeleton.

"By finding his body," Brook answered. "It was buried in the swamp near the restaurant. Once we found a priest to bless the body, the demon released his victims and was dragged down to hell by the hands that we saw Law communicating with."

"They're only people," Law said. "They're other people from different timelines. I don't know if they're relatives passed on or whomever, because I don't talk to any of them. I didn't need to."

"Then we find Doflamingo's body," Sanji said with determination, clenching a fist.

"How are you still smoking that one cigarette?" Tony asked. "Can I try? I'm dead already, so it shouldn't be a problem."

"Oh, you're right," Sanji said, removing his cigarette to give him, Tony lighting up with delight. Law reached out and crushed the thing in his hand, giving them murderous expressions.

"Be a good example, what is _wrong_ with you?" Zoro hissed at Sanji, who looked affronted.

"To find Doflamingo, I need my name to remember more of him," Law stated impatiently as he dropped the remains of Sanji's cigarette to the table. "We don't have my name because the hairless monkey here lost it."

Tony groaned noisily. "I said I was _sorry_!"

Zoro blinked thoughtfully as he fiddled with a syrup jar that rattled on the table. Ussop's head jerked in that direction, all of them freezing for a few moments. Once his attention was diverted back to his food, Zoro clumsily slid the jar back to the rack, Ussop looking once more in their direction. Sanji slapped the man over the head.

" _Think_ Tony," Zoro insisted on a whisper, rubbing what was left of his skull. "When you found it, what was it written on? Was it written on a wall? Did you have to pull it down? Pick it up?"

Tony thought hard, pursing his dry, cracked lips. "I saw it because it was a bright color on the…floor. It was on the floor in the basement, near the boilers."

Law stilled, then said, "The boilers – on the left side of the building?"

"I guess, I don't know…but I saw it and picked it up. I remembered thinking, What's this doing here? And that's when Doflamingo called my name. So I put it somewhere, I just can't remember _where_!"

All of them looked him over once more, giving expressions of frustration.

"Maybe you put it back," Brook suggested.

"I didn't! Because it was weird that it was so bright!" Tony insisted. "I know I kept it because it felt like something out of a video game! I found a treasure, I'm going to need it for later…"

"So, was it a piece of paper?" Sanji asked. "Was it from a book? A notebook? Something that looked like it was from that little thing Law carries with him?"

Tony concentrated on the question, then lit up. "Yes! It was on a small sheet of paper that felt weird! Folded in half. It had blood on it."

Law rubbed at one of his bullet wounds with discomfort. His notebook was tucked in a nearby pocket closest to one of them. He then looked at the 'Donquixote' nametag on his jacket, giving it a frustrated look. He unhooked it from his outside jacket, setting it on the table. While the living laughed and held conversations around them, the group of the dead stared at the nametag with various expressions.

Zoro sighed as he leaned back against the booth, shoving his hands into his pockets. He felt the slip of paper in there and pulled it out with a curious frown. Unfolding the blood-splattered piece of paper, he furrowed his brow to concentrate on the word.

"Trafalgar," he said slowly, puzzled as to why he had it. He showed the others. "This name would have killed me trying to say it when I was alive."

Tony lit up while Law whipped his head around with a shocked expression. He snatched it from Zoro's hand, repeating it to himself. Memory after memory hit him as his own identity returned to him with a violent heat that made his bullet wounds pulse with a renewed gush of strength that spilled against the booth seat. Brook tried in vain to avoid the blood spill that coated the seat between them while Zoro sat dumbly, trying to remember why he had it in the first place.

The boy laughed with delight. "Zoro! You had it all this time?"

"ZORO! You idiot!" Sanji shouted at him, rising with ire from the booth.

"I had no idea I even had it!" Zoro roared back at him, facing him. "How did it get in there? _Someone put it in there_!"

"No one in their right mind wants their hands in _your_ goddamn pockets!"

Zoro flailed about helplessly, looking at all of them with shock as he patted his own pockets once more, looking for more secrets.

Ussop slammed his hands on the table, rising from his seat with a frustrated snarl as Sabo, Luffy, and Franky looked at him with alarm. Sanji hastily retook his seat, covering his mouth with both hands while Zoro looked off into another direction with a nonchalant expression. Tony giggled at the reactions happening around him, having too much fun to feel any guilt. Monitors began to peek out from the walls and floor, slowing rising with the sound of cracking glass following them.

"YOU DARN GHOSTS!" Ussop howled, whirling to face their direction while everyone in their area looked at him with a start. "I told you not to follow me here! I just wanted to enjoy my meal in peace and quiet and _why are you here_?"

"We're so sorry," Brook whispered apologetically as he watched the monitors closest to them turn in their direction.

"You are NOT sorry!" Ussop stomped the floor with a foot as Sabo whispered urgently for him to calm down. The other diners around them looked around nervously, some drawing out their phones as he continued to have a meltdown.

"Sanji, you got us in trouble," Tony hissed at him, pushing up against Brook upon seeing the monitors float towards them.

"Never mind peace and quiet," Sanji demanded, hurrying over to Ussop's side so that he could speak clearly to him before the monitors could remove them. "Zoro had the name hiding in his pants. The doc's name is Traflagar Law, and his killer is named Doflamingo Donquixote. Now that we have the doc's real name, we can find the body of the spider and get rid of him. You want that? THEN you can have peace and quiet."

"I want to find _your_ body and destroy it!" Ussop hissed at him.

Before Sanji could say anything else, the ghosts found themselves within the center of a parking lot blocks away from the restaurant, in a completely foreign area to them. They looked around themselves with mystification, feeling the instinctive pull at their memory to return to something only they could see. Brook struggled to keep a clear mind, indicating that they all grab ahold of someone before they could wander off.

" _Focus_ ," he hissed. He noticed that Law was unclenching his fist after accepting the change of surroundings, seeing him look at his own name. The others ended up focusing on Brook's words, following the order with strained expressions. "Focus on the doctor."

"I know where his body is," Law said, lighting up with a somewhat devilish expression, tucking his real name back into his notebook and sliding that into his pocket. Sanji reached out and wrapped his hand into the material of his jacket, Zoro clinging to him with Tony's hand in the other. "That fucking bastard – I had already killed him once, I'll do it again."

Before they knew it, all of them were standing inside the hospital's ER.


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N: This chapter is chaotic. D:**

 **HS: Grumpy Law will remain grumpy for the rest of his afterlife – no matter how long it is. Most of them, when they'd died, retained the personality of what they were at the moment – which is pretty upbeat, considering their last thoughts (save for Zoro's, who has yet to be truly revealed) But this story will wrap up somewhat neatly…somewhat…**

 **Part Nine:**

 **Your Death Is Not Permanent**

* * *

Once he oriented himself to the busy area, the four behind him apprehensive due to the location, Law exhaled slowly while people passed through and around him. His mind was still running through moments of his past – almost as if he were rereading a treasured book that had been neglected. But he remembered Doflamingo Donquixote very well. The man's misdeeds had shaped him into a demon that used the hospital as his feasting grounds; taking advantage of the newly dead to consume and carry for his own necessary energy.

Law's job in removing souls non-stop was his way of denying Doflamingo's appetite. There were others like Law, Zoro's so-called "angels", but Law's motives were rooted with petty revenge. It made him smile crookedly at the thought of this. Looking at his hands, he acquainted himself with the frozen dead appearance he now wore as the result of his remembrance. Everything about him was blue or black, his skin colored in grey splotches.

"I remember mostly everything," he said grimly, clenching his hands into fists.

"That's _great_! Now you can focus on other things," Brook said cheerfully. Before Law could say anything, Brook pushed him along, all of them gliding through the hall entranceway in a single mass. "Now, if you remember where Doflamingo's body is – "

"I mixed an infected blanket with one of his own shortly after I was murdered. Then watched him die by his own hand once he realized what had happened."

Zoro was mystified how Law had thought to do this when none of them had the clear memory to do much of anything outside their routine.

"Admittedly," Law added, attention caught to the patient board behind the nurse's station, "I was assisted shortly after my death to understand these things but I was able to do this."

"So, someone _did_ teach you how to haunt," Zoro pressed.

"Yeah." Law glanced back at him for a moment, then said with discomfort, "it was his own brother. He died _hating_ Doflamingo and was so focused on the task that he…was able to remember. He helped me remember. But…when Doflamingo died, his brother took my name with him so that I wasn't a threat to Doflamingo. It's funny and terribly stupid how it was right there in front of him and he hadn't found it in all these years…"

"What's funny and terribly stupid is how I cannot stop comparing to you to that of a mummy," Sanji murmured, staring at Law with dismay. His upper lip curled. "It's those teeth…it's going to haunt me later."

He screamed as Law leaned down and bit him on the shoulder, causing Tony and Brook some terror.

Spitting out to the side, Law wiped his mouth. He then observed where he bit Sanji, who was rubbing that area with a horrified look. Seemingly disappointed, he muttered, "Damn…I have no ghostly vampire abilities…"

Sanji kicked him in the shin, Zoro watching Sanji closely for any signs of turning. "Keep your damn vampire abilities to yourself, doc!"

"You saw Doflamingo die then?" Zoro then questioned, eager to move on.

"Yes, I watched him turn a gun to his temple," Law stressed, glancing around. "He was already pissed at what I'd done to him – instead of being present to push him into an available doorway, I thought his brother would handle the task. I…don't know what happened but some changes occurred and Doflamingo is what he is presently. It has taken me all this time to remember these things – "

Trailing off, Law stared into the distance. "Either Doflamingo ate his brother or he moved on. I don't know."

"Is it possible Doflamingo could do away with your body? Or, why didn't he already…?" Sanji asked.

The urge to return to his routine was a warm burn that caused Law's fingers to twitch with agitation. "I don't have a body to worry about – he'd tossed mine into the fire pit which was used to burn all of the dead that were infected to avoid any confrontation. But his…his was buried here. There was a small graveyard to the left of the building back then. This place…surely it covers a large area, considering how fucking huge this room alone is…"

"Of course," Brook commented. "It takes up nearly three blocks, including the parking tower."

"Then I have to find the original floorplan," Law said, reaching out to the wall and dragging his hand against it, seemingly feeling for it.

"They could have moved all the bodies when they expanded the place," Zoro said with a puzzled expression, holding tightly onto Tony's hand as he pulled the boy close behind him. Tony was dragging his steps, sighing loudly every few steps.

"True," Brook said with a worried expression. "Once they find buried bodies, they tend to pull them and re-bury them elsewhere."

"Should we make haste to the cemetery?" Sanji asked curiously. Zoro mocked him, both of them shoving at each other in action.

"Ahhh! How terrifying!" Brook commented at the suggestion. "Mostly because I guarantee that we'll all be distracted by whom we run into over there. None of us has a real solid attention span…I know for myself I get distracted talking to all the lovely dead women – "

"How young are they?" Sanji asked with interest.

"Not like they'd want you," Zoro mumbled. "Not when you wear the same colors as they do…"

" _No_ ," Law said, his voice capturing their attention with the thoughtful way he said it. "It hasn't been moved. It's still here."

"How do you know?" Tony asked, looking up at him with wide eyes. "Do you have some sort of super sensory powers to tell?"

"It's just a hunch – he could feed off the outside world, but he chose to remain here. With the reliance I have built up in him being able to feed off the souls that avoid the light, I feel that this is his final resting grounds," Law said. "He returns here, pointedly, after every venture he makes off grounds. _Why_? There is nothing and no one to attach him here. We just need to find where his body is buried and deal with that."

"If only Ussop were more cooperative!" Sanji hissed, scowling. "Then we could have Sabo find these things for us!"

"It shouldn't take that long to find," Law said as he walked on, hand dragging on the walls. "I'm sure once I come into contact with it I'll remember it."

"He's walked through walls and taken old staircases that weren't part of this plan before," Zoro assured Brook.

Sanji squeezed his eyes shut, trying to remember the route they took with Law upon first meeting him. It was a struggle, but once the images hit his memory, he hurried ahead. "Here! We came through here the first time, then moved upward through the back of this room."

They bypassed patients occupying various rooms, until Law lit up with remembrance. He pushed through the back of one wall, forcing them into a staircase that was broken and faded, out of date with the rest of the building. The wind whistling through the narrow way almost sounded like someone was forcing the noise through their own pursed lips. Almost at once, it stopped. Edges crumbled at their feet, dribbling noisily onto the step below. Tony hugged Zoro's arm tightly, just in case it collapsed.

Law seemed to remember the route he needed to take, and pushed his way through them to head downstairs. The walls around them were old and withered, voices murmuring softly in the distance. There was an occasional cough and a muffled sob – almost musical once they were aware of it. Once the group attuned themselves to the sound, they couldn't help but react with discomfort. Only Law seemed at ease.

"It's the sounds of the old place," he assured them. "No fancy machines, no telephones, no alarms - just us and what information we knew back then."

Touching down on the first floor, he pulled open a heavy wooden door that creaked noisily up the stairway. A blast of cold air hit them all at once, causing the ghosts to shiver in remembrance of the sensation. Once they were attuned to that, they all looked at each other with startled action; the concept that they remembered the feeling of the cold was something that only they should have remembered based on their individual memory. Not all at once; not because of the circumstances.

Law looked grimly into a narrow hallway that was darkened by heavy shadows and a veil of grey fog. Like a filter that had been inserted in place, everything looked as if it had been bathed in heavy applications of shadow and dark gray. The only thing that truly stood out were the clocks on the walls. The hands continued to move silently in the cold stillness of the hallway. Law had the bewildering thought of _whom_ wound them regularly to keep them moving like this. The voices were gone, the heavy stillness uncomfortably heavy against their ear drums.

"They never stop just because _we_ stop," Sanji told him, noticing that Law was staring at the moving hands. "I used to stare at mine in my own home."

Law exhaled, expecting to see his breath. But his hands fisted in the pockets of his overcoat as the others once again banded together in a mass, peering over his shoulders with cautious action.

Stepping out onto the clean floor, his footsteps rang out with all the abrasiveness of a gunshot – the others' followed suit.

"We're so _loud_!" Tony cried with apprehension, voice muffled by the others' as they hastily shushed him.

"'tch'," Law muttered, looking around himself without a sense of fear. Now that his hatred for the man had returned, he was _dead_ – there was nothing to fear. The man couldn't kill him again. "There's nothing to be afraid of. Stop silencing him. If we have to draw that shit stack out this way, it's fine. You all can be the bait while I dig up his worthless body – "

"But not all of us want that," Sanji complained, Zoro looking at him with disgust. "Not all of us want to be bait! We've seen what he does to the monitors – why are we going to go up against something that uses the bodies of other ghosts as _decorations_?"

"If you sissies can drop your balls soon, we can complete this task and move on with our afterlives," Law stated, his step refreshed by his own declaration. The area was familiar to him – every part of it as cherished as a fond memory.

"Where would our balls go?" Tony whispered to Zoro, holding himself. Zoro tried not to laugh.

"We don't know this place very well, we can get lost," Brook pointed out, ensnaring the others' clothes collars while Zoro held onto Tony's hand with some confidence.

Sanji then realized a very important detail. "Did we just… _travel back through time_ within someone's memory?"

"This is something even I can't explain," Brook said as Zoro's eye widened with understanding. Everything that they were seeing seemed straight out of a movie set, but it was Law's own return to the site of his murder that allowed them this ability. Much like how Sanji had led him around the school, forcing the familiarity of the area onto him so that he was able to negotiate the living's area with ease.

There was still the danger of wandering off to find their routine, but they still set their foot down as they followed after Law, taking in everything around them with a sense of awe.

Law turned down a narrow corridor. He could remember moving up and down this particular section, looking in on patients that were settled in various area. There was a gunshot victim still sitting in his bed with a dazed expression, clutching his stomach. In the next, a small pox riddled family clung to the hope that they'd be saved. In the main room, there was a man with his face missing thanks to a barroom brawl, and a woman in the corner that wept piteously over her bleeding wrists.

None of them looked up at the sight or sound of their approach, focused entirely on their own shock. It was surreal to see others lost in time due to their grief and misery, too focused on their deaths to understand that they were dead.

"Why didn't you help these ones move on?" Brook asked, standing outside a doorway. Law paused in mid-step, turning to return to them. They were looking in on the family that coughed from their beds, clutching each other. Because of the way their heads were covered by their own blankets, it was difficult to tell what features they had. They were only sounds emerging from blankets with body imprints upon them.

"I don't remember them being here when I was murdered," Law murmured. "Maybe I was too busy with the living without seeing the actual dead in front of me."

He then strode towards them. The ghosts looked up at him with surprise, acknowledging his presence before he opened a door to his left. Still coughing, the group quietly left through the doorway, leaving behind rumpled blankets and moist pillows. The room seemed to sizzle in their absence until it darkened completely.

Law exhaled heavily, understanding how significant his actions were.

"Let's find the body first," Zoro insisted, aware of how easy it was for the doctor to focus on outside tasks. "You can do this _after_ we complete our real mission."

Law looked at the group of them, furrowing his brow. He looked at Tony the longest. "I can't help you two to the other side," he then said to Sanji and Zoro. "But the others are destined for a door."

"You said I can't," Tony muttered bitterly. "Because I am not dead yet."

"Your soul must have given up with your body being forcefully sustained," Law insisted, hands tucked into his jacket once more. "Finding your body shouldn't be that hard. Once you pass through the doorway, your body will die then."

Tony stomped his foot with frustration.

"You said your body died, but your brain continued on for some time," Law pointed out to Sanji. He glanced at Zoro. " _You_ said you didn't know you died. Both of these things makes it difficult to backtrack the exact moment when there was a door available for you. I don't know if I'd mentioned it before, but it might be okay if you aren't recycled. After all…it took me years to come back and open a door for these guys. Perhaps…that's waiting for you later on…"

Sanji and Zoro looked uncomfortable, but quickly held onto their positivity.

"Eventually, I do want to find my body and get rid of myself at my own country," Zoro decided. "If those ghost hunters can travel, I can travel with them."

"That is a great idea," Brook said gently. "They can do this."

"Well, there's always more out there that need guidance," Sanji told Zoro. "Plus, Luffy and Sabo are looking for their brother! There's plenty to do if I can't find the light."

"Once you're least expecting it, I'm stuffing _you_ downstairs," Law threatened Brook before turning away. "Enough of the chatter."

He pushed a door open, and Zoro caught his jacket as one step out caused the doctor to trip, looking down at a void of black nothingness below him. Sanji helped Zoro pull Law back in, the doctor looking shocked as he saw that the outside world did not exist. There was just a swirl of black that looked never ending before them.

Straightening his jacket, Law stared at this for several seconds before looking at the others. "Dead end."

The group seemed at a lost as to what to do next, staring into the void with puzzled expressions. Brook then leaned over Law to ask, "Where exactly is he buried?"

"The cemetery," Law answered, squinting ahead of him to remember the exact location. As it started to come back to him in vivid remembrance, the void opened up to reveal the pathway from the door. It was a gray existence – clumpy with grass, overgrown weeds and what looked to be a post for horses to wait. There wasn't a sky or horizon for him to see – just a worn path that he remembered using for back and forth trips from the hospital to home. It made him feel empty to look at a sky and not see it as he could remember it. His head was either down to focus on a book, or focused completely enveloped on a patient. So it made sense that the sky remained in the void.

Once that was familiar to him, the void opened to show off a dirt road that curled down to a quiet, sturdy town made of wood. Just to the side of the hospital's wooden walls was a flattened area with stones and crosses as headstones. He exhaled sharply, but wore a pleased expression. The others were taking in the scene with visible awe.

"It's like we're taking a step onto a 'West World' set," Brook said with a heavy breath, bony hands to his teeth.

Law marched in the direction of the cemetery. The others hesitated, unsure of whether venturing away from the building was safe. There was the thought that they'd drop into some endless void if Law forgot the area entirely as his attention was grasped by something else. Tony wore a determined expression, breaking free of Zoro's hold to race after the doctor. Seeing that he was running on solid ground, the others followed cautiously. Looking back at the building, they were startled to realize that only half of it was visible – the rest was shrouded within pure darkness, the void glaringly obvious like a universe upon itself. So the half of the building that Law only remembered from his vague scan looked oddly deformed as it stood against the gloom.

Law scanned the names of the crosses, a little frustrated once he realized that the wording wasn't what he remembered. All the letters looked as if someone had turned them upside down, switched them with a wing-ding. One of his hands went to his hair with frustration, looking for something that was familiar. But it seemed as if someone had deliberately written over the content he'd remembered.

Brook brightened. "This is Spanish. They're descriptions – oh, don't worry, I know some. I used to sail with them, too!"

"Doflamingo was a Spaniard," Law remembered. "He and his brother took advantage of….never mind…"

"You sure got around, didn't you?" Sanji asked Brook incredulously.

"I was an adventurer back then! You could do _anything_! Now, excuse me," Brook said politely, pulling out a pair of bifocals from his jacket pocket and slipping them over his face. All of them stared at him with incredulous action, unsure how the modern pair were able to stay in place when there was nothing for them to hang upon. "Woman, age 23 – influenza. Man, age 17 – gunshot wound. A dog named 'Bit'; mange."

"This will take too long!" Law said with a sigh as Sanji and Zoro examined the names for themselves. But they couldn't read it either – not until Sanji laughed and pointed at one.

"Grande," he said. "For Taco Bell! I remember looking at the menu and – "

"Big man," Brook said gravely, pushing him aside. "Age 44. Self inflicted."

"That's him," Law said, standing upon the grave and spitting onto it.

The world rumbled fiercely, causing them all to stagger. The hospital itself, the half that Law remembered seeing from this position outside, rocked tightly. Something massive roared in the distance.

"He's aware of what we're to do," Law muttered, narrowing his eyes as he crouched and began digging into the hardened ground. "All of you should serve as bait while I uncover him."

Sanji scowled at him. "We will get _lost_ in here if we attempt to run away!"

"You've been to the hospital a few times," Law stated. "So even you should have a little memory of the route you supposedly followed me upon. Lead him back there."

"But _you_ could be lost," Brook pointed out.

"Or I'll simply return to the area of the building I usually take on as a routine. We have to chance this." Law nodded, then pushed on Sanji and Zoro. "Go. Make me proud."

"I don't want to be bait!" Sanji whined, shoulders slumping, head back. Tony mimicked his stance for himself, something to use later on. "That's so bogus…"

Zoro exhaled heavily. "I'm no wimp or wiener. This is something I can do. If I can ride a motorcycle around the world and end up on a completely different continent – "

"That is NOT something that makes anyone brave! That just means you're stupid!" Sanji exclaimed.

" – then I can surely taunt a demon while you do whatever you need to up here. Let's go, He-Man," Zoro said, grabbing Sanji's shirt and jerking him along.

Law rolled his eyes with exasperation, pointing after them to Brook. "I'm pretty sure we just came from _that_ way. Fix it, skeleton."

"Tony," Brook said, looking down at the boy. "Stay with the doctor. Do not leave his side. It appears you have a better memory than most of us. Make sure he stays focused on what he needs to do."

" _Right_ ," Tony said, lighting up with the important task while Law looked exasperated with the baby sitter.

Brook ran after the pair that were moving in the wrong direction, dragging them back to the building. The pair could hear Sanji explaining that they could draw Doflamingo out to meet the horde. Just as Sanji had spoken some reason, Zoro cupped his mouth, bellowing out Doflamingo's full name. Law pushed Tony to the ground, hiding behind the crosses that littered the dirt – in moments, the spider burst through the open doorway nearby, laughing with glee upon spying the trio racing away from him with startled shouts. The trio were swallowed up by a collapsing vision of the hospital's front parking lot as two of them remembered the scene. The spider managed to wiggle through the disintegrating memory like an insect escaping grave danger, leaving behind a few arms and legs that didn't belong to him.

Exhaling heavily with relief, Law began to dig, Tony helping him.

: :

The horde scattered like bowling pins as Doflamingo swept through them. His various arms and legs went to shoving discarded souls like chips into his moving mouth, keeping his most of his eyes locked on the fleeing trio. Brook was screaming shrilly, hands in the air while Zoro charged after him and Sanji gasped for breath alongside them.

"I forgot why I don't run!" Sanji coughed, hand to his chest. To Zoro's disbelieving eyes, the ghost lit up a cigarette in mid-jog, Doflamingo laughing jovially a short distance behind them. After exhaling smoke, Sanji slowed down.

The spider was inches away from them when Brook noticed his proximity. He shrieked again, pouring on speed, legs moving in a flash while Zoro pumped his arms hard. Sanji zipped past him suddenly, cigarette dangling from the side of his mouth. All of them were running up the street from the hospital, Sanji leading the way to the store he'd frequented.

"tHiS loOks fAMIaliAr, dOeSn'T It, bLaCk LeG?" the spider mentioned, the heads on the back of his body crying out with agitation. "hErE is WHerE yOu cRossED oVeR!"

Glancing around, Sanji saw that this was so. The moment he did, the vivid remembrance of his intentions for dinner hit his mind – the weight of the meat in the bag, the freshly baked loaf of bread. He remembered leaving the store and taking a step off the sidewalk – the car had blasted him just moments later, before his weight could settle onto the pavement.

"yOu Don'T ReMemBer _wHy_ YoU wErEn't lOOkinG, saNji?"

His head was turned to the right, Sanji remembered, the memory presenting itself in full detail. Gone was the shadowy detail of the afterlife – he was once again a hip young man that smoked a cigarette as he cradled a bag of groceries at one arm, thinking about a pool party one of his friends was hosting that weekend. He was hoping to see a couple of classmates in their bikinis, looking as "bangin" as Phoebe Cates. It was so real that it felt like all of this had only been a passing thought.

The only thing that caused Sanji's brow to furrow was that he was looking down the street at a man that wasn't dressed for his time period.

 _Cool costume_ , he thought, intending on crossing the street as the man strutted with confidence down the sidewalk. If Sanji had been looking clearly, he would have noticed that this man was walking _through_ people.

Zoro glanced back at the feathered-haired blond, finding him looking down the street while facing it – clearly intending on recreating his death scene. He stopped short as the spider reached for Sanji, all the heads on its back screaming out with warning as various legs and arms waved about like fine hairs. With a curse, Zoro turned on one ankle and heaved himself at the blonde's legs, tackling him to the pavement. The spider missed them both, tumbling head over legs until skidding to a noisy stop.

Sanji pushed Zoro away hastily, looking down the street. Sure enough, he was seeing that ghost in 1930's wear ambling down the street.

"HEY!" he shouted, waving his arm. The ghost paused, turned and looked in their direction.

"What's up, dude?" he shouted back, waving. "You can see me?"

" _HELP_!"

The spider straightened, looking over with curiosity as the ghost ambled over with a curious expression. Brook shrieked shrilly at the sight of him, afro straightening to a full ponytail. The ghost looked at Brook with alarm, then reacted with the same action. Sanji grabbed hold of Zoro, shaking him repeatedly while pointing at the ghost – the spider looked rather puzzled that he was ignored, disregarded easily. He wore an expression of dismay at this.

" _That's_ why I died!" Sanji snarled, pointing at the newest ghost. " _I saw him_! I saw him and I fucking _died_!"

Zoro looked puzzled, standing to straighten out his flannel. "I…okay…I don't get it, but…"

"THat'S noT wHy I waNteD yOu to reMeMbER," the spider hissed at Sanji. "ThAt's NoT wHy I shOwed YoU yOur DeaTh!"

"Well, I remember _that_ part – nothing else. _And_ ," Sanji added vehemently with an arm pump that made Zoro snort, "I'd rather not remember anything else! This has worked for me!"

The spider reared up with a roar, drawing all their attention to it. The heads on its back screamed with fright, Brook reaching out and ensnaring the newest ghost by his arm.

"By the power invested in me," he declared, "I am NOT letting you go!"

" _What the hell is that_?" the ghost cried in horror, staring at the spider.

"An AdDeD MeAL? i wILL nOt CoMPlaIN!" the spider roared majestically, seemingly enlarging itself. The limbs it had forced onto its body were lengthened from the back while the arms in front elongated to turn into one spindly arm – its body lengthened to that of a scorpion's, tail lashing over head with added flailing arms. The heads on its back all grouped and merged into a set of eggs, their screamed muffled by the new casings that swept over them. The dangerous hooking needle dripped with blood that splattered carelessly around it. The single head of a grinning man popped out from the scorpion's face, the baby arms converting to those of a child's. Fingers wiggled anxiously while his real arms flexed and bulged with anxious energy.

" _lOoK_ At mE nOw," he giggled. "I aM bIgGeR! wItH MoRe mOutHs tO fEEd!"

Sanji shrieked shrilly, paling in the face as his skin broke out into goosebumps. Zoro looked at the spider with skepticism, trying to see it as the man that had confronted them into the hospital. He was stretching to find fear that he'd felt earlier, but now that he knew this was only a convenient illusion, he felt a little more clear headed. He looked from the spider to Brook, seeing the skeleton faint neatly into the ghost's surprised arms.

" _Hey_ ," he called over the spider's grand laughter and Sanji's continuous screaming. He reached out and slapped the blonde's back to interrupt that shrill sound, Sanji spitting out his cigarette and hacking viciously over the pavement. "Let's cooperate together. Clearly these guys are no good."

"Oh, _dear Lord_ , what happened to your face?" the ghost asked anxiously, lip curled. "Did you really get that angry with your nose?"

"We're trying to get rid of this guy so we can go home. Can you help us?"

The ghost considered this with a thoughtful expression, looking from Zoro to the spider. He dropped Brook to place his hands on his hips. "I've got nothing else to do. Sure."

: :

Ussop shivered mightily. _Something_ happened. Something felt different. A different sense of panic filtered through him, coating his blood with ice. He wasn't sure why, considering he could hear absolutely nothing, but something was wrong. He was unsure of how to express this as Sabo worked hard to find the answers he needed. He couldn't find a Trafalgar Law – nothing in his search pulled up anything about a German doctor in the same time period as Doflamingo Donquixote.

"It's been a long time since then," Sabo muttered, glancing at Doflamingo's face. "There's nothing on his death record – not even a family history. He's just…a very small article on the web that gives us nothing but a face."

Luffy leaned over him, glaring at the screen. "But they're afraid of him."

"No so much as afraid," Ussop corrected, teeth chattering. Franky looked up at him with concern. The apartment was comfortably cool, but not enough for the younger man to be so…cold. "But that doc definitely had a problem with him. It seems like they were enemies. Brook said that this…Doflamingo was responsible for the small pox outbreak here."

"What an asshole," Franky commented with concern.

"But…" Ussop trailed off, looking up at the ceiling with thought. "What makes this all so weird is how none of them are clear about their past. They were working on the doc to remember his – which says that…even if we do our best to find him, Luffy, Sabo, I don't know how successful we'd be if we continued looking for Ace."

Luffy frowned. "Sanji said he could help. I believe that guy."

"I do too," Ussop had to admit reluctantly. "Because he started this shit from the first moment! The others complained enough for me to feel comfortable with that…but even if he finds Ace after this…are we going to feel any comfortable knowing that he's still out there?"

Luffy sighed heavily, fiddling with his recorder. "I don't know," he mumbled. "I don't…I know there's an afterlife, I'm not…rejecting that idea that we just disappear right after. But…I…now I think it'd be better knowing that he's not around because he was pulled into the light."

"And even if he wasn't," Sabo chimed in carefully, "then there must be a way in which he can be allowed to move on."

Ussop nodded grimly, all of them lost in their individual thoughts.

"We're not going to get anywhere about this Donquixote character," Sabo said with a sigh, rubbing his eyes. "Even if we pursue this thread, what are we going to do about it? They're _dead_. Whatever problem they have in the afterlife – we can't fix."

"If we don't help them with this issue, Sanji can't help us with Ace," Luffy stated firmly. "So we must do whatever it takes to help them."

Ussop exhaled heavily. "Well…I'm sure we can just do what we can but…I'm not even sure what they need us to do. I'm pretty sure they returned to the hospital, so all we can do is what for them to show back up again. Even if…even if they brought the spider back."

"We can handle him if he's in man form," Franky said skeptically. "Now that I know he's a man, I mean…that's different. It's not like we've seen anything differently. Even that demon Brook helped us with was nothing other than a shadow mass that never stayed in one place. How scary can this thing really be?"

The apartment rocked with noise, screams and shouts. Ussop reacted with a startled scream, hands to his ears. Sabo spit his coffee into his laptop while Franky jerked up from his chair and tripped over it in his haste to run. Luffy fell backwards from Sabo, stumbling over the coffee table. But they were showered by game posters, pictures on the walls as something massive swiped them down. Pieces of debris rained over the four living beings as the screams persisted.

"kNoCk kNoCk!" the spider laughed merrily, the front door slamming open so hard that it left an indenture in the wall. Its arms shriveled with pain once it came into contact with the powerful protection spells in the foyer. It hissed, dancing in place as it pushed against the invisible force.

"HE'S HERE!" Ussop shrieked in surprise.

"aLL i WaNT foR chrISTmas iS tHe soUls of ThREe dEaD mEn," the spider hissed from the open doorway as Luffy, Sabo and Franky righted themselves with expressions of confusion on their face. Only Ussop was stiff with fear, listening to the sound of fearful screams, the movement of multiple limbs moving about. "aNd oNe boNEY sNaCK tO fEED mY chILDren!"

"USSOP!" Sanji shouted, hanging onto the man with both arms, breathing heavily while Ussop shrieked in response. "Your spells! HURRY UP! We're GOING TO die!"

" _AGAIN_!" Brook shrieked, catching sight of agitated monitors popping up around them. "Invite us!"

Without hesitation, Ussop screamed out, "ZORO SANJI BROOK TONY LAW! _What are you doing_?"

Almost as a collective effort, the monitors slipped away from the trio but valiantly did their best to grab onto Doflamingo. Their noises caused Ussop distress as they were felled by the spider's powerful arms; Ussop could hear them squealing and trilling as hurt animals, and he slapped his hands over his ears with a sound of misery.

The spider ripped the spells away from the walls with a cheered cry, the living able to see them being shredded right in front of them. The demon began to show itself in spurts of black shadow, the light from the landing showing them multiple human limbs and longer spidery legs that continued to pull into the apartment. Its laughter became very audible to them, causing more than one face to pale with the significance of the moment. But as he inched in, his limbs and those that didn't belong to him began to stick to the protection scrolls that covered the walls. Much like how fly-paper worked – it caused his own skin to sizzle and hiss.

Sabo could see the scrolls left behind flutter, burning like someone held a magnifying glass against a source of light against the paper. It was such a surreal experience for him to see that he did not know what to focus on first.

"tHeSe tHiNgS ARe aNnOyinG, sO i'LL jUsT rEmOVe tHeM nOw," Doflamingo said, shredding one long scroll in half and tossing them aside, allowing him more room to shuffle in. Despite his effort, the pieces were stuck to him – the living could see them flutter with the spider's movement. The doorway cracked and groaned as he lowered his tail to fit. But his legs protruded too far outward, catching in the small space allotted. He reached out, trying to grab onto the four that were just barely avoiding his reach.

Ussop ripped himself from Sanji's grasp – the sensation that he could feel coming from the spider urged him to give that area a wide berth. He raced to his room, hearing the screams of his friends and the ghosts trail after him. He scraped mirrors from the walls, the scrolls that seemed a little too useless. Running in, Sabo helped him with the armload, shoving mirrors down in front of the living room to reflect back at the open doorway.

"tHat HuRts, yOu bAsTardS!" the spider hissed, limbs drawing in front of his face with dramatic action. "yOu'rE KillINg mE!"

"Use the scrolls to overpower his legs!" Brook shrilled, snatching them from Sabo's arms and slapping them onto the spider's moving legs with concentrated effort. Every limb seemed to weaken significantly, causing Doflamingo to bellow with fury as each limb became useless; trapping him.

He then shrieked with renewed fury as their newest friend darted in to reach for the arms sprouted around his neck, twisting and breaking them with just a few short movements. The roar that erupted after that caused Franky, Sabo and Luffy to cover their ears, pale faced with the recognition of a monstrous noise.

" _Now_ , Sanji!" the ghost roared at his new friend, Sanji darting in with a pale white object in hand that he used to stab deep into Doflamingo's main left eye.

The spider froze with statue-like grace while Sanji hurried out of his reach, breathing heavily. The ghosts watched the spider's legs slowly lower as one of Sanji's ribs bobbed with the movement of the spider's head. Zoro looked at Sanji with question, until Sanji lifted his shirt to show him where he'd retrieved the weapon. The sight of one missing rib from his battered ribcage caused Zoro to make a disgusted face, Sanji lowering his shirt with a huff.

Ussop breathed fitfully – he could hear the sounds, but not being able to see what was occurring was _maddening_. He could hear the others' whispers his way, demanding to know what was happening – he couldn't even explain what the ghosts had done, but he was damned sure he heard a new voice in the mix.

He was quite sure he _knew_ that voice. He'd heard it countless times while Sabo and Luffy watched old videos of their brother.

It took him a few shocked moments to compose himself, his expression saying everything for him.

"…Ace?" he questioned, the name leaving him with a startled tilt.

The spider's arms lowered completely to the ground. One of Doflamingo's main arms lifted, fingers wrapping around Sanji's rib bone. He pulled it out – once the bone left his face, a dark fluid began to escape from him, splattering over the apartment floor with a spectacular gush. Zoro, Sanji and Brook " _ew_ 'ed" collectively while the newest ghost looked at Ussop with a confused expression.

"Yeah?" he answered with hesitancy, re-focusing on the spider as he tossed Sanji's rib.

"ThIs hAs oNlY mAde mE thAt mUch _anGrier_ ," the spider stated slowly, the remains of his eye spilling over his sharp cheek.

" _Ace_?" Ussop repeated skeptically, Sabo and Luffy looking to him with horror.

The ghost in the 1930's garb turned to look at him with a puzzled expression, straightening his fedora. "Who's calling my name?"

Sanji whirled to look at the others as the spider shifted shape, unfolding into that of the man that had faced Ussop and the others nights earlier. He was visible to the living, his other hand clamped to his wounded face while Ussop and the others focused on him with startled action.

"Who the hell are you?" Franky demanded as the man bled freely in front of them.

Sabo gasped because it was obvious that this man was the very same one they'd just seen on the computer screen minutes earlier. Luffy was still staring at Ussop, waiting for him to say something else.

"Ussop," he whispered urgently, as Doflamingo cursed fluidly, " _Ussop_ , are you talking to Ace?"

Ussop gathered his breath.

"This was most unfortunate," Doflamingo snarled, pulling his hand away from his eye. It was ruined beyond repair, causing the living to react with disgust. His other eye bulged with angry promise. "Now I'll have to kill you all!"


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N: Thank you all for reading this! It was a weird story for me to write. But it's finished without a real true conclusion – just like death itself ;)**

 **HS:** He's pretty happy at what he does lol

 **Guest:** Thank you for checking in and reading! It wasn't meant to be horror, but just a story about life after death :D (though if you WANT to read horror, I definitely got a few)

 **Part Ten:**

 **Not All Are Meant For The Light**

* * *

With loud grunts, Tony and Law managed to pull the body from the plain wooden casket. The man was missing most of his face, cleaned expertly and laid to rest in brilliantly colorful clothes. But Tony was startled to see that the casket had entire nets of webbing clinging to the wood, spiders and their eggs spilling out with every movement of the body. With the loss of the man's face, he couldn't tell what sort of expression he was wearing at the time of death. It was a little more gruesome than Zoro's face, and Tony couldn't help but make an uncomfortable face.

Once Law managed to pull the body onto the dirt, he breathed heavily, hands on his back to rub at the ache caused by the effort. Mostly because he remembered how it felt to pull on a body that was bigger than his – the feeling was automatic. Spiders raced away from Doflamingo's stiff form, fleeing thick nets. He was a little surprised that this demon hadn't rotted away traditionally – he had to acknowledge that he looked more like a mummy with enough preservation to show off the familiar prickle of small pox, which extended up towards his neck and jawline. His big hands were folded over a bible. The very sight of the implication caused rage like no other to tear through Law's frozen blood stream, multiple bullet wounds gushing with strength. Law spit on his corpse, Tony watching him apprehensively while avoiding the blood spatter.

Law then reached for the door at his feet, fingers clenching upon the handle with determination. When he straightened he lost his grip with a puzzled stumble. He crouched to grasp the handle with both hands and yanked – but the door remained shut. Tony gasped.

"He must've locked it from inside!" he exclaimed. "When he was in there!"

Law considered this, standing straight as he panted. He'd removed his jackets, so his bullet marred back seemed to pulse with blood as his wounds oozed. Tony's lip wrinkled in disgust. "How would he get out?" he asked with a puzzled expression.

Tony frowned with consideration, then brightened. "Brook mentioned that was a limbo chamber – maybe he was able to get out once judgement was rendered onto him, but he chose to fight his way back. He's not like a human being as everyone else when you push them in, he has the ability to traverse between up and down."

Law frowned at him. "But that also means that the subject of heaven and hell is real."

Tony gave him a patient look. "You've mentioned for yourself that people are given a direction, Law. No matter the person, they go _somewhere_ to be recycled. It doesn't necessarily mean that they go a specific place that the _living_ has designated. After all, how can the living truly know what happens after if none of us have reached that designated spot? Considering our…spotty memories…"

Law found himself thinking about it. He did remember telling one of those dopes a near similar version of this. How he knew of it himself to say anything at all was something he couldn't explain. He shrugged a shoulder, straightening his suspenders. "Then…we have to destroy the body so that his soul is forced to go somewhere. I thought I could just shove his gross ass into that doorway and that would be it, but of course - !"

He kicked Doflamingo's corpse with all the fury he could muster at that moment, the body rolling over onto its front to expose its back.

" – _he_ had to make this extremely difficult!"

"Do we…burn it? Corpses can be extremely flammable after being cleaned for burial," Tony said tentatively as Law crouched and grabbed the shoulders of the corpse's jacket. He slowly began dragging it towards the hospital, grunting as he did so. Due to the big man's size, Tony couldn't help but look down at it in awe – _surely he was part of the Bigfoot family_ , he mused. This man was a literal giant.

"There are tools inside the surgery room I can use to break it down, and throw piece by piece into the fireplace in the main room," Law said with effort. "Don't go anywhere – if I lose you, I'm not finding you."

Tony sniffed haughtily, but he grabbed the corpse's left foot. He held it gingerly, trying to help Law. "You're not going to lose me. I'm more of a mind than you. If I don't keep you focused, _you're_ going to wander off, then _I'll_ have to save the day. That'll make the others reconsider sending me off."

Law snorted, managing to re-enter the hospital backwards. The sound of them dragging the body across the floor was gruesomely loud, ringing through the empty, shadow corridors.

"You can't avoid recycling forever, kid," he grunted. "When you're reborn, maybe your ungrateful ass will thank me."

"What's going to happen to you?" Tony asked curiously, pushing Doflamingo to assist with Law's dragging. "Can you move on?"

Law felt like Tony was asking if he _wanted_ to – not if he were able to. It was an odd feeling.

"Never thought about it," he confessed. "I don't feel like being recycled. This job is more fulfilling than my life ever was."

"Well," Tony said, looking cautious about it, "you can help Sanji find more souls to recycle. Then you'll be busy all the time."

Law sighed heavily. "I'd rather throw myself through the bottom door than listen to _that_ guy for one more minute."

Tony snickered.

Once Law found a space appropriate for the man's size, he went hastily for the cabinet with all the tools. Tony watched him from behind, his eyes widening as he saw that most of these things were tools he'd seen in his grandfather's shed; hand saw, scissors the size of his garden shears, what looked like a type of ice cream scooper, glass tubes that looked too big for medicine, hammers, huge tweezers – he could not imagine what all of these things did.

Law retrieved the handsaws and rummaged through some drawers until he found lamp oil and matches. He then stalked towards the corpse, shoving the oil and matches into Tony's hands. Then he started sawing away at the body, Tony looking away with disgust.

"This…will…fix…everything…I…assure…you," Law said between movement. His frozen face looked maniacally happy. "Ash…to…ash…dust…to…dust…!"

 _I wonder if all doctors feel this way, sometimes_ , Tony thought with unease, wondering if he'd caused his doctors any trouble. Law straightened up, pointing at him with Doflamingo's arm.

"Grab some of those weeds from outside, crosses, too. Get a bonfire started in that fireplace there."

Tony looked at him blankly, Law pausing a moment to see this. "I don't know _how_ to start a fire. I'm pretty sure I never needed to in my whole entire life. I was born in a modern world!"

Law nodded as he threw aside the saw once he connected the dots on that one. Tony wondered how many limbs the doctor had sawed off in his lifetime to remember _how-to_ in his afterlife. Taking the fire starters, Law started the fire – he wondered how the others were doing.

Law then began tossing pieces of the corpse towards the fireplace, hurling each one in with all the force of someone throwing a baseball. Flames licked the air noisily, but Tony couldn't remember the last time he heard the sound of fire. It just burned brightly, silently, as a shimmer of light and not of the quality that Law did. For Law, he was briefly reminded of the last time he stood before a fire – staring into the same fire place, thinking about the words that were entrusted to him.

The sound of incoming footfalls caused him to look up and back with a start. The villain stood in the doorway, alive and well – the day bright after a night's worth of snow fall. But the scene was entirely different from the one he'd left – everything felt like an afterthought as Law blinked repeatedly. His mind was already racing because everyone spoke rapid-fire English and he was struggling to keep up. He felt out of place and unwelcome because both his language and understanding of the country's every changing laws from territory to territory was confusing to keep up with. But he understood that this man was a monster – a demon walking freely amongst the living. Not yet dead but not yet alive, either.

"You save my brother yet, doc?" Doflamingo asked him, and it took Law a few seconds to understand what he meant.

"No," he answered simply, knowing he had to get the information to the nearest deputy. "No last words spoken, either. Don't know what to tell you."

"That's too bad, I thought he'd have a lot to say," Doflamingo said, his accent tinged words thick with sarcasm that Law was able to catch. "Considering he had a mouthful to carry with him onto the next life."

Law shrugged, hands in his pockets. He couldn't exactly look at the man, who was taller than most men and made most of them uncomfortable at the same time. But Doflamingo stared at him for such a long time that it caused Law a nervous twitch. The taller man leaned down to say, "Are you _sure_ he didn't say anything?"

Law coughed, causing Doflamingo to draw away hastily. "Nothing. If you'll excuse me, I've got rounds to do."

"Wait."

" _Law_?"

Law snapped out of the memory. He looked down at Tony, seeing the boy's confused expression. "What? Are you offering to do something useful?"

"No, you ass! It looked like you…" Tony struggled to find the right word to describe what he'd seen. " _Glitched_. I almost thought you were going to disappear right in front of me."

Law looked at him with a blank look, but he understood what Tony was trying to say. "I was…reviewing a memory."

"It almost seemed like you were moving back into it. Maybe physically revisit it. You do that, you're going to leave me behind."

Law considered it for a few moments, then nodded. "Throw me a leg."

Tony did so, grunting with effort. Once sparks and ash fluttered about, the limb slow to flame, he looked at Law with agitation. "There's no need to revisit the memory when you have all you need to proceed. It's an unnecessary noise. All you are doing is reminding yourself how to hate again."

Law furrowed his brow, considering Tony's choice of words. Then he looked at the hairless boy with a start.

"Stay focused, Law," Tony said cheerily.

: :

The tall man was very human, Franky realized, pushing against him in an effort to get him out of their apartment. Luffy was at the man's feet, shoving with all his strength against legs that felt like pillars. Doflamingo laughed with amusement as he easily forced the two back, his eye spilling with strength. The apartment was in shambles; chairs strewn about, furniture overturned, the floor covered with debris. The battle was for their very lives as Ussop quickly gathered their protection spells and Sabo helped him.

The ghosts were doing their best to battle the scorpion tail and multiple limbs that waved away from Doflamingo's body, the ghostly form invisible to the living. While to them he was a man that spilled read blood, to the dead he was an impossible monster. With all the eggs on his back screaming in muffled fear, the ghosts weren't sure what to do.

"I'm working together with my murderer," Sanji snarled while looking at Ace, who looked at him with surprise. "Not the guy that physically _murdered_ me, but murdered me because he distracted me."

"I thought you were one of us!" Ace exclaimed, ducking when Doflamingo's arms stretched out towards him.

"I _never_ in my life was able to see ghosts until I saw you! _Then I died._ "

"Will both of you _shut up_?" Zoro snapped at them both, picking up a kitchen stool and batting Doflamingo's reaching arms away from them. Ussop shrieked at the sight of this. "We're in the middle of something here!"

"None of this makes any sense," Brook huffed, laying on the floor stiffly, winded. "How were you able to travel through time, Ace?"

"I wasn't aware that I was! I was just following this dude in pirate clothes because I thought he was part of the party! He was a cool old dude," Ace huffed, lighting up, "I just _knew_ he was cool – I thought he was one of those babe magnet billionaires…"

Ussop slapped a scroll onto Doflamingo's arm, the man roaring with outrage as it dropped with dead weight to his side. It allowed Luffy to jump and punch, throwing all his weight into a fist that knocked the man from Franky's grasp. Zoro and Sanji jumped out of the scorpion's grasp, its tail shooting outward in an effort to pin one of them. Ace and Brook dodged the multiple arms that stretched to catch its body in mid-fall.

It was a chaotic scene, and Ussop couldn't get a clear answer from anyone on what was happening. All he knew was that Doflamingo needed to be stopped. He was aware that Tony and Law were not present, which suggested to him that the ghosts had something going on – perhaps a distraction, perhaps they were gone forever – but he felt like they were okay. He ripped off a big piece of duct tape then forced his way in close to tape another piece of a protection scroll against the tall man's leg.

Doflamingo roared with a scream that wasn't human, his skin shimmering with shadowy action. For a moment, his true form was visible before he snapped his teeth shut, growling noisily as he easily swept aside Franky and Luffy with a swat of his hand.

"You _imbeciles_ ," he snarled, staggering up against the kitchen counter. He reached down and ripped off the scroll. "None of you can - !"

He paused, his limbs stilling for a brief moment. The ghosts watched as the heads on his back all snapped to look in one direction, falling completely silent. Then – his limbs began to fall away from his body, snapping away without any direct contact.

Sanji clasped his hands over his mouth with relief. "It's working!"

Doflamingo's face burned red as he scanned the apartment. Once he realized what was happening he gave an enraged scream, causing the living to look at him with perplexion. Brook grabbed Sanji's and Zoro's collars, giving a puzzled Ace an apologetic look.

"Tell Ussop there we are headed back to the hospital," he hissed as Doflamingo changed, taking on his spider form. He fell to the floor with obvious trouble, losing limbs by the second. Every part of him shook, like a spider dying under the spray of a chemical. Now that he was gone in the sight of the living, all they could do was hear Doflamingo rage and curse soundly. "Law and Tony are taking care of the body – that's where we'll be - !"

" _Wait_ \- !" Ace exclaimed as the trio slipped out of his sight. He looked at Doflamingo then to Ussop, whose hands were clapped over his ears. Ace brightened considerably once he saw his brothers, laughing noisily. "You guys! You guys, I can't believe it, I finally found you!"

Doflamingo released one final scream, and his spidery body enveloped inward until disappearing. In the silence that remained, only Ussop could hear Ace's cheered expressions. Franky shakily took to his feet as Sabo caught his breath, winded by his efforts. Luffy slammed into Ussop, forcing him to look up.

"Is Ace here?" he cried frantically, shaking him.

Ussop struggled to push away from him. "He is! Somehow he is!"

"Those guys lead me here!" Ace exclaimed with excitement. He couldn't touch his brother, but he looked upon him with utter joy. "I'm here! You guys have been looking for me?"

Ussop caught his breath. Wearily, his mind whirling with confusion and fright, he sought to get himself together. Having these ghosts in and out unexpectedly with their own battle within the afterlife had left him feeling ages older and definitely out of shape. He was quite positive his heart couldn't keep taking this tremendous stress.

"He is," he repeated, Luffy and Sabo lighting up with joy. "He is."

"That guy said I killed him," Ace said, mystified. "There were a lot of other words exchanged, but then _this_ was happening at the same time."

"Killed who?" Ussop repeated, feeling his face fall. He knew the details of Ace's death – he was quite positive that the man wasn't a murderer.

"Sanji said he'd seen me the day of his death!"

Ussop looked puzzled, relaying what he was hearing to a set of faces that looked utterly perplexed.

"But," Sabo muttered, confusion heavy on his tone, "Ace died _long_ after he did."

"I know the details, so I don't get what he's saying," Ussop said, sitting down heavily.

"I didn't even know I _died._ It just seemed like I was moving through a very long day that I really didn't think would ever end," Ace said with a perplexed expression, straightening his fedora and jacket. "But I had a kid come up and tell me that I did. Little guy said he was wandering around from the hospital to find his grandfather."

Ussop's eyebrows snapped together. "So you ran into _Tony_?"

Ace wore a puzzled expression, fiddling with his jacket hem. "He…there wasn't a kid with these guys…"

Ussop briefly explained who each ghost was, Ace furrowing his brow a little heavier each time. He then exhaled after Ussop waited for him to speak again. Ace turned his attention to his brothers, noting the differences in their features since the last time he saw them.

Sabo wrote hastily as Ussop spoke aloud and relayed what he could of Ace's words. Luffy was too emotional to even think of getting to his equipment, Franky shutting and locking their front door, leaning against it for strength. In the stillness and quiet of the aftermath, it felt important to speak at a lower volume than usual. Almost as if the three were desperately straining their own ears to hear Ace's voice –but only Ussop could do so. Because of the quiet, Ussop could hear Ace with no problems.

"I don't know his name," Ace replied, fiddling with his loose hair. It kept falling into his face, no matter how many times he swept it underneath his fedora. "I kind of had the idea I was dead when I saw the memorial at the party. The others there had no idea what happened. They're still there. I left to try and find you guys to figure this out, and…I'm glad I finally did. I couldn't leave my path…I ran into plenty of others while out there, but hell if I can remember all of them…all I did was retrace the route from the bus stop to the party…never occurred to me that I was getting nowhere. It felt like a never ending loophole. That kid came along and really punched it through me, but there wasn't anything I could do about it…"

Ussop nodded grimly. "They all say that," he murmured. "It's because you missed the light. You'll only repeat the route you'd taken that day up to your death…I guess it takes the power of another ghost to interrupt it or until you remember your name…"

Ace looked unsettled. He touched the nametag he'd had to write in upon entering the party – momentarily acknowledging the spatter of blood at the edge. "I knew my name. It's written on my name tag here. I just…was easily distracted, I guess. But I repeated it over and over because it felt like I needed to…. _wow_ …I just…don't know what to say…"

Luffy sniffled, sitting with his knees splayed onto the ground. Just knowing that Ussop was carrying a conversation with a brother that he'd lost filled him with such emotion that he couldn't think properly. Sabo reached out and rubbed his shoulder with some comfort as Franky returned to them – careful to step away from where Ussop was focused as Ace stood there.

Ussop fiddled with his fingers. He then said slowly, "You did die, Ace. At a Halloween party. Some disgruntled ex-boyfriend of some girl found her there with another man, and came back with a gun. A lot of people died when he went after her. The music was so loud, some people didn't know that there was a shooting so they didn't flee. It was…one of the city's biggest mass shootings."

Ace absorbed the information with a frown, then looked down at his clothing. He pulled his jacket out to see the bullet holes. Realizing that the hair he kept pushing from his face was blood – his fingers shook as he saw this. He knew he was dead, he just wasn't aware of _how_. The circumstances were mystifying, but the end result was that he was wandering the afterlife without any perception of time.

Ussop looked puzzled. "But that doesn't explain how you caused Sanji's death."

"Sanji died in the eighties – Ace's was…recent," Sabo said slowly, looking confused.

Ace considered this for a moment, then furrowed his brow with concentration. "There's a lot of people out there. Sometimes I would follow them and come back in time to walk my path again because I thought they were part of the party…"

Ace remembered when he walked right into Sanji. _My dude_! he'd exclaimed.

Now Sanji's mystification made sense when he called back, "… _you can see me_?"

Those that were still at the party were still partying, talking amongst themselves as if nothing had happened. Giving him those stiff, puzzled smiles whenever Ace brought up the sight of memorial objects that the living had left behind. The horror that this long day had finally come to an end left him with a frozen smile – unsure of what to do now.

He exhaled shallowly. "All their weird clothes – I guess they weren't costumes after all. I remember _that_ guy because his clothes were hideously similar to an eighties' commercial, or something…I thought it was a costume! I guess now I realize he wasn't joking the first time I talked to him. Freaky, huh?"

Ussop chuckled weakly.

: :

Law tossed in the last of Doflamingo's body into the fire. It burned freely, crackling noisily – everything that he could remember of a fire. Tony watched with awe, mesmerized by the flames.

"It's a good thing we can't smell it," Law muttered. He didn't want to recall the memory of the fire pit from previous burns.

"Once he's gone, everyone can return to normal!"

"Move on, you mean?"

"I suppose!" Tony fiddled with his hands, obvious anxiety on his features. "I sure hope those other guys are okay…"

"Yeah, well…main thing is, once the body is dealt with, we can be free of this," Law muttered, rubbing at his back and shoulders. He sighed heavily as Tony watched him.

All at once, the trio burst through the doors down the hall, startling them.

"You did it!" Sanji exclaimed breathlessly, dragging Zoro behind him as the motorcycle man snarled.

"We even assisted with the others along the way," Brook said, nearly stumbling over the mess left behind when Law sawed the body into chunks. The skeleton couldn't help but release a horrified shriek.

"Did he disappear?" Law asked Sanji as the blonde dumped Zoro onto the floor, Tony laughing at him. "Did he go away?"

"NOOO!"

All of them jumped as Doflamingo's voice rang out from down the hall, the man staggering in with obvious trouble. He was wearing the clothes his body wore – the outrageous color standing out brightly against the shadows and grey of the hospital. All of them bunched together to stand behind Law as he turned to face him grimly. As Doflamingo approached, parts of him began to fall away as ash that fluffed and spurted over the windless air.

His winded breathing was noisy and loud against the still quiet of the hall.

"You think this is it?" he panted, parts of his shoulders and legs disappearing as he moved. "This is the end of my reign, or even the end of evil? It's not even that. This is a temporary matter that will resolve quickly, and not in your favor…I won. I don't get to be held accountable for a crime that was easily dusted over in history, and you will remain nameless…"

"Murderers will always excuse their actions under the guise of some sob story," Law snapped at him, slapping away Brook's clingy hand as the four of them kept themselves behind him. Once the doctor realized that they were using him as cover, he grew alarmed.

"I knew it was wrong," Doflamingo said slowly, mouth settled into a frown, "but it was survival for those times. Look at what happened because of it! Life flourished and expanded. Isn't that what death is? A chance to allow for the living to continue?"

"Not under _your_ rule of thumb," Law snapped at him. Most of Doflamingo's upper torso began to flutter and disappear – his arms began to shorten, his legs cracking and snapping as they thinned. A large part of his head began to fall and did so with a gush of disappearing ash. "Death comes naturally – it comes as may! To force it isn't under anyone's command to give!"

"Not even God's?" Doflamingo sneered. "Surely you understand that I have a working relationship and understanding with Him – "

"Man has a way of clearing space for others," Law said slowly, "but it's not up to man to order a final decision of whom goes where or whom does what. That's _if_ to say there is a God in the first place. Most of us don't wind up where we feel we should – we just end up repeating what was left of us to the next life."

"I don't think you understand the bigger picture here – there's not enough of you to designate us towards our final destination – "

"Because it never stops," Tony said, speaking up firmly. He stood away from Law to capture Doflamingo's attention, the man disappearing slowly in front of them. He stood on one leg while most of his upper half began to flutter away, leaving just enough space of his face to speak. "But every once in a while, when someone's hurt a lot of people – that's the end of your roll because you won't ever learn. You bypassed the system – took advantage of its weakness to continue living like you hadn't died at all. Sometimes it happens. And sometimes it needs to be this way to end. And your time is up."

"And who are you, little boy?" Doflamingo sneered down at him. He was nearly disintegrated – but still an imposing figure that had Law's hand drawing down protectively over Tony's head to push him back to the others. Sanji held onto him with Zoro taking the stance in front of them.

But still, Tony smiled at Doflamingo. Once he realized the answer, the man's face shifted. He moved to dart forward, all the screams and cries of the souls he'd collected crying out in once. Before he could touch any of them, he faded away into nothingness. The silence left behind was immense.

Examining the empty hall, Law exhaled shallowly. He looked back at the fire to see that only ashes remained. The others all released sounds of relief, looking at each other with victory.

" _We did it_!" Sanji cried, tossing Tony up into the air, the boy crying out with surprise. "Isn't this great? We solved the mystery! Just like the Scooby Doo gang!"

"It wasn't even close to that, Fred," Zoro snapped at him, arms crossing over his chest. Sanji paused to consider that insult, then lit up at the thought.

Now that affairs had been settled, the memory of the past began to shift. All of them were now standing in the hospital's grand lobby, where the fog had lifted. They could see the details of the floor as it was the living, and it was loud, bright and brilliantly clear. Sanji tossed Tony over his shoulder like a rag doll, sidling up to Law.

"Say it," he demanded, poking the man's frozen cheek. Law snarled at him, teeth clamping over thin air as Sanji skirted away safely.

"It's over for him," Law said reluctantly, "but we still remain. As much fun as this way, and I use that word loosely, I've still got a job to do. I'd like to continue doing it. Maybe with less enthusiasm, though…"

"I don't get to go into the light, so I'll just wait for the day when I hear you say 'Thank You'," Sanji said, a little too cheerfully.

"We've got something to finish as well," Brook said, gesturing at Tony as the boy sighed noisily.

Law smirked as he adjusted his suspenders, then pulled on his overcoat like it had been waiting in his arms all this time. Zoro noticed this, unsure of the mechanics present as Law adjusted his new name tag – embroidered against the top left pocket was his true last name. He furrowed what was left of his forehead with some confusion.

"I can do it," Law said. "I know where he is. Why don't you go back to the others so you can run this lost puppy back home?"

"I can't wait," Zoro said tiredly. "I feel like I ran a marathon, or something. I'm ready for a long nap."

"After all this time?" Brook asked curiously. "None of us can feel anything like that, again!"

"I just thought of it, so I just now remembered it. That's the rules, right? Once we remember something, we can feel it."

"Oh, after you run this kid back to his body, we have one last task for you," Sanji said, lighting up. "We found Ussop's friends' lost brother! He needs to go to the light."

"I keep repeating myself to you! Do you use your ears for listening, or are they for decoration purposes only?" Law snapped at him grouchily. "I don't care how you assholes die in the street –"

"Let me at least hang out with you guys to do that!" Tony complained. "C'mon, I helped you all this time, didn't I? Don't I get _at least_ that?"

Before any of them could say anything, Penguin rushed up to them, papers flying from his arms. Breathing heavily, he found what he needed and gave it to Law. "Sixth floor. This needs your signature. Also, the ER is full again. _Where have you been_?"

"Enough of your insolence. I'll be responding shortly." Law handed him the paperwork, Sanji curious as to what needed the doctor's signature. He tried to look but Penguin took off just as hastily as he appeared, fleeing through a wall with a stressed look to his jaw. He sighed heavily. "Well, let's get this over with."


	11. Chapter 11

**Epilogue**

* * *

"So, he wasn't one of us?" Sanji asked, trailing off in a confused tilt as he followed after the irritated doctor.

"I'd already told you what you needed to know – quit following me around! Get an education in nursing and then come back to me with your presence!" Law snapped at him as he looked over the paperwork to an elderly man. Surrounded by family, he was breathing his last and Law was impatiently waiting for an opportunity.

"I obviously went to college to cook, not to medicate!" Sanji snapped back at him. He sat at the side of a woman sniffling into her tissue, petting her gently. "There, there. He's in good hands…I'll personally see him off."

"Quit talking to people like they can hear you!"

"Tony was a full grown man lying in a bed his spirit left years ago," Sanji said, watching with a frown as Law wrangled the old man from his body. The old man sputtered, drawing in a sharp inhale once he realized he was looking at his family from a different point of view. Law didn't give him much of a chance to say anything before he tossed him through a doorway he opened to his left. Slamming the door shut on his emerging protest, the doctor left the room as alarms rang out.

Sanji hastily followed behind him through the wall. "But he knew more than any of us did, including you. So I still stick to the thought that he was more of an angel than you are."

"I'm NOT an angel!" Law huffed, touching the head of a crying young boy, whose mother pressed cold cloths to. There was a nurse talking gently nearby, two other children watching on with concern. Sanji patted their heads, one of them looking up with a startled look. "Don't touch them!"

"He's in good hands," Sanji assured the boy, whipping out his cigarette supply that never seemed to end. The boy smiled at him, his brother looking at him cautiously.

"If you can't abide to our rules," Law stated, turning away from the bed as the crying boy began to calm down, "then _leave_. You are annoying me…"

"If I leave, you'll forget again. Besides, Brook said those guys won't be back for some time," Sanji complained. "I figure a few more rounds and I'll travel back there. I'm hoping they have more luck locating that moss's body than they do finding him after he wanders off…"

Law paused at the bedside of a man howling over his broken leg. He turned instead to the girlfriend that fiddled with her phone, snapping her gum. Seeing the spurts of a shadowy being wafting around her, he sighed with irritation. But he reached out to touch her head instead, jerking her out of her body with no warning or comfort. Her soul gave a startled shriek as he stuffed her into the bottom door, black smoke wafting around the edges. The man's howls turned to screams of terror as his girlfriend's body slumped back into her seat, dropping her phone. Sanji was mystified to the reasoning, but he hurried after the doctor as he emerged into the main hall, hands in his pockets.

"Something that leaves me curious," Law said slowly, "to all those that wander, like you and I, we're not traditional deaths. Expired before our appointed times. The clocks on the walls that we see continuously turning – do they continue to do so as we see them? Or are they timers themselves?"

Sanji shrugged, looking at his broken watch. "Your time should've been up eons ago, so I don't think so…"

"Tony actively traveled between times because he had the presence of mind to do so. That's how he found Ace – that's how he found you. Doflamingo knew of all of us because he was a demon that fed off too many lives, which suggests he'd eaten some of your relatives to know who you were," Law said. "We can only travel to where one has the memory. So how did he know where we'd be to talk to us?"

"He was a _living_ soul," Sanji said.

"That doesn't make any sense, idiot."

They walked through a wall, taking the old stairway to a floor that gleamed with blue walls and painted murals. It was quieter here, with visitors wearing worn expressions and nurses that weren't as active as the others. In every room, machinery sounded out with almost timed precision. They came to the doorway of one, looking in on three beds with three different bodies. One of them was against the far wall – clearly lost in time, with an old, hunched man sitting at his side. He had an open book on his lap, and he was reading to the man sleeping before him.

Law ventured in with a glance at the others, Sanji following to stop at Tony's bedside. He could see the child that had intercepted them in this man's features. The idea that he was looking at a living body without a soul made him feel uncomfortable. He expected the man to move, to speak, to look at him – but he'd seen Tony walk through an open doorway with Law's assistance.

Law listened to the older man read a chapter out of a current novel to him. He could see that the old man's time was nearing – he could reach in and take his soul, but he held back. Something inside of him held back – something he couldn't understand. He looked to the laptop nearby, opened but with a black screen. Reaching out, he pressed the space bar to see that the old man had his Facebook up and running. He didn't understand it, so he couldn't exactly decipher what was visible to him.

Sanji awkwardly reached out to touch Tony's face, but he couldn't remember what it was like to touch another man. He couldn't remember ever doing so, so he couldn't remember the feeling of another's warmth. He dropped his hand with a sigh.

"He was what he was," Law said slowly. "Explaining it to you would take too much time."

"Obviously I have time, shitty quack."

"Doflamingo knew what he was," Law said. "But he realized it too late."

"That he was…God?"

"When people speak of meeting god, or relatives on the other side when they're about to die, they must see us," Law said. "And the concept of recycling to live again, does that earn you any confidence that there is one?"

Sanji was uncertain about how to answer that. So he ended up shrugging. "Guess I have _some_ time to think about that."

Law had to agree with him.


End file.
